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Class __D_C3j3. 
Book Ilq3 



£?£ 



HISTORY OF FRANCE 



VICTOR DURUY 

Mbmbeb op the French Academy 



ABRIDGED AND TRANSLATED FROM THE 
SEVENTEENTH FRENCH EDITION 



MKS. M. CAEEY 

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTICE AND A CONTINUA- 
TION TO THE YEAR 1889 

BY 

J. FRANKLIN JAMESON, Ph.D. 

Professor op History in Brown University 






NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 
13 AsTOR Place 






Copyright, 1889, 
Bt THOMAS Y. CROWllLL & CO. 



Ttpogeapht bt J. S. CusHiNG & Co., Boston. 



CONTENTS. 



INTEODUCTION. 

Pagb 

Geographical Description of Gaul 1 



FIRST PERIOD. 

Chapteb Gaul Independent (to 50 B.C.). 

I. Primitive populations : manners and customs (to 125 B.C.) 9 
II. Migrations of the Gauls (to 123 B.C.) 15 

III. Conquest of Gaul by the Romans (125-50 B.C.) 19 

SECOND PERIOD. 
Gaul under the Romans (50 B.C.-476 a.d.). 

IV. The Gauls under the Empire (50 B.C.-395 a.d.) 26 

V. Invasion of the barbarians. — The Franks before Clovis 

(241-481 A.D.) 32 

THIRD PERIOD. 

Merovingian France (481-687). 

VI. Clovis (481-511 A.D.) 36 

VII. The sons of Clovis (511-664 a.d.) 43 

VIII. The sons and grandsons of Chlothar I. (561-613 a.d.) 48 

IX. Condition of Gaul in the sixth century 53 

X. Chlothar II. and Dagobert sole kings of the Franks : after 

them, anarchy (613-687 a.d.) 61 

FOURTH PERIOD. 

Carolingian France (687-887). 

XI. Reconstitution of the Empire and of authority by the 

mayors of Austrasia (687-752 a.d.) 66 

XII. "Wars of Pippin and Charlemagne (752-814 a.d.) 72 

XIII. Government of Charlemagne 78 

XIV. Dismemberment of the Empire of Charlemagne by the 

revolt of the nations (814-843 a.d.) 86 

XV. Dismemberment of the kingdom of France by the usurpa- 
tions of the Leudes (843-887 a.d.) 91 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



FIFTH PERIOD. 

Chapter Feudal France (887-1180). Page 

XVI. The last Carolingians and the dukes of France 

(887-987 A.D.) 100 

XVII. The first four Capetians (987-1108 a.d.) 105 

XVIII. France in the eleventh century : exposition of the 

Feudal System Ill 

XIX. External enterprises in the second half of the 

eleventh century 126 

XX. The first crusade (1095-1099 a.d.) 129 

XXI. The rural classes, the urban population, and the 

communes : Louis VI. (1108-1137 a.d.) 135 

XXII. Louis VII., the Young (1137-1180 a.d.) 144 

SIXTH PERIOD. 

First Victory of Royalty over the Feudal Aristocracy 
(1180-1328). 

XXIII. Philip Augustus and Louis VIII. (1180-1223 a.d.) . . 148 

XXIV. St. Louis (1226-1270 a.d.) 159 

XXV. Civilization in the thirteenth century 166 

XXVI. Philip III. the Bold and Philip IV. the Fair (1270- 

1314 a.d.) 175 

XXVII. The three sons of Philip the Fair (1314-1328 a.d.) . . 183 

SEVENTH PERIOD. 

Hundred Years' War; Renewal of Anarchy (1328-1436). 

XXVIII. House of Capet-Valois : Philip VI. (1328-1350 a.d.) 187 

XXIX. John the Good (1350-1364 a.d.) 194 

XXX. Cliarles V. the Wise (1364-1380 a.d.) 203 

XXXI. Charles VI. (1380-1422 a.d.) 212 

XXXII. Charles VII., to his return to Paris (1422-1436 a.d.) 225 

EIGHTH PERIOD. 

Festal Victory of the Crown over the Feudal Aristocracy 
(1436-1491). 

XXXIII. The English expelled from France : government of 

Charles VII. (1436-1461 a.d.) 239 

XXXIV. Louis XI. (1461-1483) : his reign to the death of 

his brother (1461-1472 a.d.) 251 

XXXV. The reign of Louis XI. (1472-1483 a.d.) 263 

XXXVI. The reign of Charles VIII. (1483-1491 a.d.) 275 



XXXVII. 
XXXVIII. 



NINTH PERIOD. 

ITALLVN Wars (1494-1515). 

First Italian War (1494-1498 a.d.) 283 

Louis XII. (1498-1515 a.d.) 288 



CONTENTS. 



TENTH PERIOD. 

First Struggle of France against the House of Austria. — 

Increase of the Royal Power. — The Renaissance. 
Chapter (1515-1559.) vag^ 

XXXIX. Francis I. (1515-1547 a.d.) 299 

XL. Henry II. (1547-1549 a.d.) 314 

XLI. Government of Francis I. and Henry II 319 

XLII. The Renaissance under Francis I. and Henry II 324 

ELEVENTH PERIOD. 

Religious Wars. — Feudal and Communal Anarchy renewed. 

XLIII. Francis II. (1559-1560 a.d.) 382 

XLIV. Charles IX. (1560-1574 a.d.) 338 

XLV. Henry III. (1574-1589 a.d.) 350 

XLVI. Reign of Henry IV. (1589-1598 a.d.) 365 

TWELFTH PERIOD. 

The Re-establishment of Internal Order by Royalty, and 

THE Second Struggle of France against the House 

OF Austria (1598-1659). 

XLVII. Reorganization of France by Henry IV. (1698-1610 

A.D.) 377 

XL VIII. Louis XIIL (1610-1648 a.d.) 385 

XLIX. Minority of Louis XIV. and administration of Maza- 

rin (1643-1661 a.d.) 404 

THIRTEENTH PERIOD. 

Triumph of Absolute Monarchy (1661-1715). 

L. Louis XIV. : Internal organization ; Colbert ; Lou- 

vois ; Vauban. (1661-1683 a.d.) 416 

LI. Louis XIV. : external history and conquests, from 

1661-1679 430 

LII. The last part of the reign of Louis XIV. (1679-1715 

A.D.) 440 

LIII. Government of Louis XIV 460 

LIV. The age of Louis XIV 468 

FOURTEENTH PERIOD. 

The Eighteenth Centutiy. — Development of the Abuses of 

Absolute Monarchy. — Progress of Public Opinion. 

(1715-1789.) 

LV. Minority of Louis XV. and regency of the Duke of 

Orleans (1715-1728 a.d.) 480 

LVI. Reign of Louis XV. (1723-1774 a.d.) 487 

LVII. Condition of France at the end of the reign of Louis 

XV 506 

LVIIL Reign of Louis XVI. to the Revolution (1774-1789 a.d.) 522 



VI 



CONTENTS. 



FIFTEENTH PERIOD. 

Chapteb Constitutional France, since 1789. page 

LIX. The Constituent Assembly (1789-1791 a.d.) 535 

LX. The Legislative Assembly (1791-1792 a.d.) 550 

LXI. The Convention (1792-1795 a.d.) 555 

. LXII. The Directory (October, 1795-November, 1799) 566 

LXIII. The Consulate (November, 1799-May, 1804) 579 

LXIV. Reign of Napoleon I. to the peace of Tilsit (1804-1807 

a.d.) .... 590 

LXV. The Empire, from 1807 to 1812 604 

LXVI. The Empire, from 1812 to 1814 610 

LXVII. The first restoration and the hundred days (1814-1815 

A.D.) 624 



APPENDIX. 

Summary of Events from 1815 to 1870. 

I. The Restoration 632 

II. The July Monarchy (1830-1848 a.d.) 635 

III. The Republic of 1848 644 

IV. The Second Empire (1852-1870 a.d.) 649 

Continuation : 

The German War and the Third Republic (1870-1889 
a.d.) 657 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 



The work which follows is an abridged translation of the sev- 
enteenth edition (1884:) of the Histoire de France, in two volumes, 
by the distinguished French historian, M. Victor Duruy. A good, 
short history of France is, it is believed, a book widely desired ; 
and perhaps this is especially true in the present year, when that 
great country, its past and its present, is attracting an unusual 
degree of attention. For this purpose no better choice could be 
made than that of the famous work of M. Duruy. Ex-President 
Andrew D. White, of Cornell University, whose especial familiarity 
with French historical literature is well known, has said of it that, 
" of aU the short summaries of French history, this is probably the 
best." President C. K. Adams, in his Manual of Historical Litera- 
ture, declares that it is " beyond question, the best history of France 
ever published in the small space of two volumes." Its popularity 
ill France itseK is attested by the extraordinary number of tlie 
editions through which it has passed. In preparing the present 
abridgment, the effort has been made to follow as closely as possi- 
ble the text of the original. A continuation has been added, bring- 
ing down the narrative from 1870 to the present year. 

It has been thought not unfitting that this work should be intro- 
duced to the American public with some notice of its eminent 
author. His life has been marked not only by distinguished lit- 
erary achievements, but by public services of an unusually interest- 
ing character. 

Victor Duruy was born at Paris on the 11th of September, 1811, 
of a family of artists employed in the Gobelin tapestry works. At 
first he was himself destined to the same employment ; but at the 
age of twelve he entered the College Sainte-Barbe, now called the 
College RoUin, and began his classical studies. Seven years later, 
in 1830, he was admitted into the ficole Normale Superieure. Here 



Viii INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

h,is taste for historical studies already showed itself, and at his 
graduation from the institution, in 1833, he was sent as professor 
of history to the college at Rheims. Thence, after a few months' 
service, he was recalled to Paris, and was given charge of the same 
department in the College Henri IV. Here, and at the College St. 
Louis, he continued as professor until 1861, exercising throughout 
that period a strong influence upon historical education in the sec- 
ondary schools of France, both by his instructions and by his 
writings. 

The first in the long series of M. Duruy's published writings 
began to appear soon after his recall to Paris. At first he ren- 
dered anonymous assistance in the production of several text-books 
of history. The earliest of his writings which appeared under his 
own name were on subjects in the field of historical geography. 
They were, first, his Geographie Politique de la Republique Romaine 
et de V Empire, which appeared in 1838 ; second, his Geographie His- 
torique du Moyen Age (1839) ; and thu'd, his Geographie Historique 
de la France (1840). The three works had a common aim, to im- 
prove historical education in France by making it easy to accom- 
pany the study of history with that indispensable adjunct, the study 
of historical geography ; in 1841 the labors performed in the prei3- 
aration of the three works were summed up in an Atlas de la 
Geographie Historique Universelle. 

For some years after this, M. Dm-uy's attention was mainly 
given to ancient history. In 1844 he began the publication of a 
Histoire des Romains et des Peuples soumis a lew Domination, in 
two volmnes, announced at the time as the prelude to a more 
extensive work upon the same subject. What was substantially 
a third volume of the same, a work entitled Etat du Monde 
Romain vers la Fondation de VEmpire, appeared in 1858, nearly 
contemporaneously with the foundation of that other military 
empire with whose fortunes the author was in so distinguished a 
manner to be connected. This last work was used by the author 
as a thesis for the degree of docteur es lettres, which he received in 
1853. Meanwhile he had published, in 1845, an Histoire Sainte 
d'apres la Bible, which in 1884 had reached its eighth edition, and 
of which the author also prepared an abridgment, in 1848 an 
Histoire Romaine in one volume, and in 1851 an Histoire Grecque 
of similar extent. These last two had in 1884 reached their 
sixteenth and twelfth editions respectively. His works in the 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. ix 

department of French history began with the publication of «, 
small text-book in 1848 ; four years later he brought out the first 
edition of his Histoire de France, in two volunaes, of the seven- 
teenth edition of which the present volume is an abridged transla- 
tion. So extensive was the popularity of M. Duruy's works that 
they had sold in 1860 to the amount of more than two hundred 
thousand copies. That their favor with the reading public and 
their use for purposes of instruction has not since declined may be 
judged from the fact that in 1879 it was estimated that, including 
in addition the works which the indefatigable historian had pub- 
lished in the interval up to that date, the extraordinary number of 
a million and a half copies of his books had then been printed. 

In 1861 M. Duruy resigned his professorship, and became, first, 
inspector of the Academy of Paris, and then lecturer at the £cole 
Normale. Continuing his studies of classical history, he pub- 
lished in 1862 a larger work of Greek history, Histoire de la Grece 
Ancienne, which received the honor of being "crowned" by the 
French Academy. It is no secret that he rendered very consider- 
able assistance to the emperor Napoleon III. in the preparation of 
the latter's well-known history of Julius Caesar. At the personal 
desire of the emperor he was next appointed inspector-general of 
secondary instruction, and professor of history in the Ecole Poly- 
technique. He then published, in the year 1863, an Histoire des 
Temps Modernes, now in its tenth edition, and an Histoire Populaire 
Illusiree de la France ; in 1864, as a companion to this, an Histoire 
Populaire Contemporaine ; and in 1865 an Introduction Generate a 
I'Histoire de France. Several of the historical works which have 
been mentioned, together with the Histoire du Moyen Age, which 
has now passed its twelfth edition, form part of the collection of 
historical manuals called the Histoire Universelle, published under 
the editorship of M. Duruy, concerning which it may suffice to 
quote the statement of President Adams of Cornell, in his work 
referred to above, that, "as a whole, they probably form the most 
valuable series of historical text-books ever published." Mention 
of several minor school text-books of M. Duruy has necessarily 
been omitted. 

The desire to treat together a group of the author's historical 
works has led us to a slight anticipation in the narrative of his 
life. A new career began for M. Duruy in the summer of 1863. 
At the end of June of that year, while he was making the tour of 



X INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

the departments in his capacity of inspector-general of secondary 
education, an imperial missive, which, forwarded from his home, 
had pursued him from department to department, finally reached 
him in one of the southern departments, and informed him that 
he had been appointed minister of public instruction. M. Duruy 
has himself told us that he never received from the Emperor any 
other instructions than these words, in a letter written soon after 
his appointment : " Maintain, as I do, an enthusiasm for all that 
is great and noble." The new minister entered at once and with 
vigor upon a career of wide and far-seeing educational reform. 
His tenure of office during six years, a period almost unexampled 
among modern French administrations, gave abundant opportu- 
nity for carrying out such designs, and the years 1863 to 1869 form 
an epoch of the most signal importance in the annals of French 
education. 

It is impossible to do more than mention the chief measures of 
improvement which signalized this great administration. M. Duruy 
restored the study of philosophy to an important place in the cur- 
ricula of the lycees, or secondary schools. He introduced into 
them, against strong opposition, the study of contemporary history, 
rightly contending that it was absurd to know the history of 
Pyrrhus, yet to be ignorant of that of Napoleon I., Louis XVIII., 
aind Louis Philippe. He introduced gymnastic exercises and mili- 
tary drill into the lycees, colleges, and normal schools, and arranged 
with Marshal Niel a plan by which six or eight hundred instructors 
would have been sent each year into the village schools, to prepare 
the youthful portion of the rural population for national defence. 
He arranged upon a more satisfactory basis the mutual relations 
of scientific and literary studies in secondary schools. He pro- 
vided a commission to which professors displaced from state insti- 
tutions might appeal. He reorganized the Museum of Natural 
History, and so developed the courses of instruction afforded by 
it that they might serve the interests of agricultural education. 
Recognizing the benefits which German university instruction had 
derived from the system of seminaries, he established, for similar 
purposes, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes iStudes, and provided 
numerous laboratories for scientific instruction and research. The 
learned societies of the provinces were encouraged and their labors 
systematized ; and a professional normal school was established in 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. xi 

the buildings of tlie old abbey of Cluny, to which students might 
be sent from each department. 

M. Duruy also entered with enthusiasm into the work of improv- 
ing and extending elementary education. He developed, at Paris 
and in most of the important French cities, a system of evening 
schools for the instruction of adults. One of the most compre- 
hensive of his schemes of reform proposed that elementary educa- 
tion should be made both gratuitous and compulsory throughout 
France. The former element of his plan was accepted for gradual 
introduction; to the latter, serious objections were made, and it 
was deferred. Another important innovation consisted in the 
establishment of free courses of public lectures and instruction. 
Courses of this sort, under competent professors, were established 
in almost aU the leading cities. All these progressive measures, it 
should be said, were carried out by M. Duruy at the cost of an 
astonishingly smaU expenditure from the national fimds. Finally, 
toward the end of the year 1867, M. Duruy went further, and 
attempted to inaugurate state instruction of girls by establishing 
special public courses for them. At Paris, the Empress conducted 
her nieces, the daughters of the Duchess of Alba, to one of these 
lectures; but in the provinces the clergy, from the beginning, 
declared themselves hostile to a project which looked toward the 
secular education of women. 

Mgr. Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, headed this opposition, 
and argued with much vigor and eloquence against the proposed 
innovation. A strong agitation against it was undertaken, to 
which the Pope lent his approval. Many of the previous meas- 
ures of M. Duruy had excited considerable opposition and aroused 
heated discussion, as was natural when so many comprehensive 
reforms were so rapidly brought forward. The result was that 
by an imperial message of July 17, 1869, M. Duruy was replaced 
in the ministry of public instruction by another. Among the acts 
which distinguished his brilliant and extraordinarily fruitful offi- 
cial career, mention should also be made of the publication of the 
valuable and comprehensive series of Rapports Officiels sur les 
Progres des Letires et des Sciences, prepared under his direction on 
the occasion of the universal exposition of 1867 at Paris. 

On retiring from the office of minister, M. Duruy was made a 
senator of the Empire, with a dotation of 30,000 francs. Decorated 
with the badge of the Legion of Honor in 1845, he had been sue- 



xii INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

cessively promoted to be an officer, commander, and finally, in 
1867, grand officer of the Legion. He had been made an officer 
of the Turkish order of the Medjidieh in 1857. M. Duruy retained 
his seat in the Senate until the fall of the Empu-e in 1870. He 
maintained an enthusiastically patriotic attitude during the Franco- 
German War, and took part in it as a volunteer. He has since 
pursued his historical studies, and produced not only several new- 
editions of his former works, but especially, what may probably 
be regarded as the most conspicuous of his works, a much enlarged 
reproduction of his Histoire des Romains (1870-76). A sumptuous 
edition in seven volumes (1879-85), covering the whole period 
from the most ancient times to the invasions of the Eoman Empire 
by the barbarians, represents doubtless the final form of this 
work. The author is now engaged in producing a similarly en- 
larged and sumptuous edition of his Histoire des Grecques, He 
has also published a volume of Causeries de Voyage. 

In 1873 M. Duruy was elected a member of the Academy of 
Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, succeeding M. Vitet. After the 
fall of the Empire he remained an imperialist, and as such, in 
January, 1876, offered himself as a candidate for the Senate, in the 
department of Seine-et-Oise, but was defeated. In 1879 he was 
chosen a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. 
On December 4th, 1884, the distinguished historian received the 
highest and most coveted honor which the literary career in 
France affords, being elected, practically without opposition, a 
member of the French Academy. He was chosen as the successor 
of the great historian Mignet. He was received into the Academy 
in June, 1885, the discours de reception being pronounced by Mgr. 
Perraud, Bishop of Autun, who, together with three other Academi- 
cians, — the Duke of Aumale, Elmile Augier, and Victorien Sardou, 
— was formerly a pupil of M. Duruy. 

J. FRANKLIN JAMESON. 
Pbovidencb, June 1, 1889. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



A GREAT poet of another nation called France the soldier of 
God. For more than twelve centuries, indeed, she seems to have 
acted, fought, and conquered or suffered, for the whole world. It 
has been her singular privilege that nothing of the greatest magni- 
tude has been accomplished in Europe without her having a hand 
in it; no great political or social experiment has been tried that 
has not first been worked out within her borders ; and her history- 
is a summary and abstract of the whole history of modern civiliza- 
tion. Such was the part played by Athens in the Greek world, and 
later, in the third age of ancient civilization, that of Rome. For 
there is always one point at which the general life is most intense 
and rich, a focus in which civilization concentrates its scattered 
rays. 

I will venture in a few lines to sum up the general course of our 
history and the civilizing role of France. 

At first, upon the soil of Gaul, the fortunate configuration of 
which Strabo admired to the degree of finding in it the proof of a 
divine providence, we see only a confused mixture of mutually alien 
populations, Iberians and Gaels, Kymry and Teutons, Greeks and 
Italians, with the old Celtic element predominating. Yet to sub- 
due them required ten legions, Caesar, and his genius. 

Rome gives to this chaos its first organization. To these warlike 
nations, whose taste for wandering and for war so greatly disturbed 
the ancient world, she brings order and civilization ; she covers 
their country with roads, with monuments, and with schools. She 
gives them her laws, her municipal system, and, later, her adminis- 
trative traditions. Gaul then becomes the most prosperous, most 
Roman, and therefore the first, of the provinces of the Empire. 

But this empire, to which its poets were promising an eternal 
duration, begins to crumble beneath the weight of the defects of 
its own government. New nations burst in upon its provinces, 
scattering the seeds of ruin and death. The invasion of the bar- 



XIV PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

barians takes place in every province ; it is in Gaul alone that it 
succeeds. There it establishes the state into which all the others 
are to be merged. How long did the frail kingdoms of the Bur- 
gundians and the Suevi, of the Vandals and the Heruli, of the 
Goths and the Lombards continue? The strongest of them did 
not last three centuries, while the successors of Clovis and of Charle- 
magne transmitted their crown and their title to a house which is 
even yet not extinct. 

After having spread over all lands, the invasion halts, recoils, 
and disappears. What has Africa retained of the Vandals, Italy 
of the Goths, Spain of the Alans and the Suevi? In France, on 
the other hand, it takes root and acquires permanent organization, 
on condition of ceasing to be itself, by suffering itself to be led by 
those whom it has subdued, and especially by the Church. "When 
thou fightest," a bishop of Valence wrote to Clovis, "the victory 
is ours." 

The bishop was right. The victory of the Franks was the salva- 
tion of the Catholic clergy r for at that hour they were threatened 
by the most serious dangers to which they had ever been subjected ; 
Arianism was everywhere triumphant. What ardent desires, then, 
did it not entertain for the success of that Frankish tribe which 
alone did not bear upon its forehead the mark of heresy, which 
was to give security and power to the Church, to conquer all in 
order to lay all at its feet ! Mitis, depone colla, Sicamber. 

An enemy hitherto invincible approaches. Islam, starting out 
from the depths of Arabia, has spread in less than a century from 
the Ganges to the Pyrenees. It desires to throw down this barrier 
also. Its light horsemen pass the Garonne and cross the Loire; 
Christian Europe is at its mercy. The Franks check its fiery 
enthusiasm and hurl back over the mountains the Moslem in- 
vasion, broken and henceforward powerless against Western 
Europe. 

The Papacy, lately freed from the supremacy of the Byzantine 
emperors, was in danger of falling under that of the Lombard kings. 
In an age when all questions tended to become religious questions, 
when all society was enclosed and enfolded within the Church, 
when the nations yielded with docile obedience to the words which 
fell from the throne of St. Peter, it was not well that the head of 
Christendom should, for lack of political independence, run the 
risk of becoming an instrument of oppression in the hands of a 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xv 

single prince. Pippin and Charlemagne founded his temporal 
independence. 

The barbarian world remains fluctuating and undecided, aban- 
doning itself -without control to the manifold influences which 
were acting upon it, without sense of common interests, and there- 
fore without strength or stability. Charlemagne takes it in his 
powerful hands, gives it form and organization, and seeks to 
breathe the breath of life into this refractory mass. He gives form 
to German and Christian Europe, and, by making Rome its central 
point, shows that it must necessarily rest upon ancient civilization, 
purified and transformed by Christianity. Unfortunately for Italy, 
he revives the Western Empke ; but he creates Germany, which did 
not exist before his time, and he confers upon France that European 
supremacy which the Merovingians set before its eyes for a mo- 
ment, and which it has so many times exercised since then. Charle- 
magne dies, his work dissolves ; but he did not entirely die, for his 
grand form rises above the feudal times, like the genius of order, 
constantly inviting the nations to emerge from chaos and seek 
union under some glorious and powerfiil head. How greatly 
kings were aided by the recollection of the great emperor in their 
efforts to re-establish their power and that of the state ! Under 
Charlemagne, almost all Christian Europe was the territory of the 
Franks, and the old provinces of northeastern Gaul, from which 
they had come, formed but the centre of their empire. But his 
successors suffered this too heavy crown to faU from their heads. 
The Empire becomes divided into kingdoms, the kingdoms in turn 
dissolve ; France, pushed back from the banks of the Khine to 
those of the Meuse, becomes a confused agglomeration of little 
independent states, and thick darkness settles down upon the 
world. When it clears away, a new society appears, feudal society^, 
and modern civilization begins, its point of departure being pre- 
eminently France. 

The feudal revolution, it is true, went on in aU parts of Ger- 
manic Europe, but it took definite form in France. It was French 
feudalism which settled in England with William the Bastard, in 
Southern Italy with Robert Guiscard, in Portugal with Henry of 
Burgundy, in the Holy Land with Godfrey of Bouillon. It was 
the French lords who drew up the typical charter of feudalism, the 
Assizes of Jerusalem; who called into existence tournaments, the 
military orders, chivalry and heraldry ; who conceived that ideal 



xvi PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

• 

of courage, purity, devotion, and gallantry which has left inefface- 
able traces in modern manners. It was in France, in a word, that 
feudalism and chivalry and aristocratic society had their highest 
expression, as later was to be true of absolute monarchy and later 
still of democracy ; as if upon the people of France were laid the 
charge, in behalf of other nations, to make trial of all forms of 
political constitution to their utmost consequences. 

Feudalism, so oppressive in its age of decline, had had its time 
of rightful rule, when it checked the second barbarian invasion, 
that of the Northmen, Hungarians, and Saracens ; for every form 
of power gains a footing by its services and falls by reason of its 
abuse. It had also its heroic age, in the time of the Crusades, 
when millions of men gathered together to march to the conquest 
of a tomb. The Crusades are the greatest achievement of the 
Middle Ages, and they belong almost wholly to France, as does 
the Truce of God which preceded them. The East has recognized 
this ; to it, from those days to this, every European is a Frank, and 
the historian of the Crusades gave to his book the title of Gesta 
Dei per Francos. 

The Middle Ages were then at their apogee, and it is in France 
that they attained their highest greatness. Italy has illustrious 
pontiffs, but a saint, the eldest son of the Church, sits upon the 
throne of France. The clergy is everywhere powerful, but where 
does one find in greater number or in greater impressiveness those 
lessons of equality and respect for intellect which the Chm-ch gave 
to feudal society, by preserving the system of election, elsewhere 
lost, and by summoning the least of the sons of the people to sit 
on its pontifical thrones as the equals of the great ones of the 
earth? Where did monasticism, and the fortunate results which 
at first attended it, achieve so great an extension? A French 
monk, St. Bernard, governs all Europe ; and what order can rival 
that of Citeaux, whose head was called the abbot of abbots, had 
under his command more than three thousand monasteries, and was 
the superior of the military orders of Calatrava and Alcantara in 
Spain, of Avis and of Christ in Portugal? A new art, which 
neither Greece nor Rome knew, which is neither German nor 
Saracen, though the Orient perhaps gave its first suggestion, rears 
those mountains of stone, whose mass, at once imposing and light, 
still fills us with admiration. Paris, " the city of the philosophers," 
is the focus of all light ; from the remotest regions students flock 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xvil 

to its schools, which have drawn forth learning from the retirement 
of the monasteries, and given it a secular complexion. Great 
reputations are made at its university alone, which counts twenty 
thousand scholars, and at which the most illustrious doctors of Ger- 
many, Italy, and England are in turn pupils and masters. Their 
idiom is Latin, their science Scolasticism ; but the language of 
Villehardouin and Joinville aspires to universal sway, thanks to 
the crusaders, who carried it everywhere, thanks to the troubadours 
and trouveres, who poured a great flood of poetry upon Europe. 
"It is current throughout the world," says, in 1275, an Italian, who 
is translating into French a chronicle of his own country; and 
Dante's teacher uses it to write his Tresor, because " the lan- 
guage of France is most common among all nations." The intel- 
lectual dominion over Europe already belongs to France. 

'Civilization does not always advance in a straight line. It has 
its times of halt and of retreat, which would make us despair if 
we did not know that the life of humanity is a long journey upon 
a difficult path, in which the eternal traveller ascends and descends, 
while still pressing forward. When, in the times of St. Louis and 
the Doctor Angelicus, the Middle Ages have reached the highest 
attainments of Catholic art and science, they descend rapidly down 
the opposite slope and lose themselves in the lower levels of the 
succeeding century, one of those most abundant in miseries. 

Scarcely, indeed, has the great thirteenth century ended, when 
all that it has loved and glorified declines or falls. The Papacy is 
unworthily buffeted at Anagni and held captive in Avignon by the 
hand of that very France which had aided it to rise above the thrones 
of kings. The Church is torn by schism, the Crusade goes to the 
stake in the person of the knights of the Temple, and feudalism, 
silently undermined, begins to fall. A prominent lord, nephew of 
the Pope, is hanged like a peasant, and a peasant, a money-changer, 
receives a patent of nobility. 

What then is the force that thus spreads ruin about it and rises 
upon the debris ? The great revolutionary at this time is the king, 
as the aristocracy had been in the times before Hugh Capet, and 
as the people were to be after Louis XIV. But lately a prisoner in 
the four or five towns which were all that Philip I. possessed, royalty 
had in two centuries broken through the circle of feudal fortresses 
which hemmed it in, and had marched with great strides, from 
usurpation to usurpation, as the nobles said, toward absolute au- 



xviii PREFACE TO TEE FIRST EDITION. 

thority. In other words, it had recovered, one by one, the powers 
of state usurped by the lords, had imposed upon these insubordi- 
nate vassals, who dated their charters by the reign of God, in the 
absence of any king, Deo regnante, the king's peace, the king's jus- 
tice, the king's money, and, after an interval of three centuries, 
had resumed the exercise of the right to make laws for the whole 
state. The last capitulary is one of Charles the Simple ; the first 
ordinance of general import is one of Philip Augustus. At the 
accession of the House of Valois, feudalism had no longer any 
other than administrative and military power. 

This revolution from above had been possible because a revo- 
lution from below had also been effected. Philosophy and Chris- 
tianity had undermined the slavery of ancient times : the barbarian 
invasion had disorganized it, and gradually the slaves had become 
serfs, owing customary instead of arbitrary services, livmg and 
dying, remote from a capricious and violent master, upon soil on 
which they had been born, and upon which the rural household now 
at last began to take form. This new class gained accessions from 
two sources : slaves rose into it, coloni and dispossessed freemen 
sank into it. In the tenth century the transformation was com- 
plete. There remained very few slaves, and in general only serfs 
were to be found among the rural population as well as in a great 
part of the population of the towns. 

Then another process began. Bishop Adalberon, in a Latin poem 
addressed to King Robert, recognizes only two classes in society, — 
the clerks who pray, the nobles who fight : far below creep about 
the serfs and villeins, who work, but count for nothing in the state. 
These men, whom Bishop Adalberon did not reckon, nevertheless 
caused him apprehensions. He foresaw with grief a coming rev- 
olution. "Our ways are changing," he cries; "the social order is 
disturbed." It is the cry of all the fortunate ones of every age, at 
each sound of clamor from below. He was right : a revolution was 
commencing which was to draw the peasants out of their servitude 
and set them upon a level with those who were then masters of the 
land : but the revolution required seven centuries for its achieve- 
ment. 

The towns gave the signal : communal insurrections introduced 
freedom and order within their walls. The crown favored this 
movement, outside of its own domains, upon the lands of the lords ; 
and the communal soldiery, in turn, aided the king in his feudal 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xix 

wars. They gathered under the oriflamme before all the castles 
which Louis "VI. desired to destroy, and aided Philip Augustus to 
gain our first national victory at Bouvines. 

The communes sought a jealous independence, but the independ- 
ence of towns was no more to be desired than that of castles : the 
royal power struck them both down, for they would have prevented 
the formation of the national life. But instead of restraining these 
anarchical liberties by reducing them to liberties compatible with 
good order and unity in the state, the royal power struck them 
down completely, and thus prepared the void which later spread 
around itself. 

But if the castles and the communes lose, the simple villes de 
bourgeoisie and the rural districts gain. The first obtain guarantees 
for their industry and their commerce, for the security of the prop- 
erty and persons of their inhabitants ; the others witness still fur- 
ther improvement in the condition of the rural populations. In 
the twelfth century serfs are admitted to bear witness in court : 
in the thirteenth, enfranchisements become more numerous, for 
the lords begin to perceive that they will gain by having on their 
lands industrious freemen, rather than serfs, " who neglect their 
work, saying that they work for others : " in the fourteenth the 
country districts receive organization, the ecclesiastical parishes 
become civil communities : finally, in the fifteenth, they for a mo- 
ment enter upon political life; the peasants take part, in their 
primary assemblies, in the nomination of deputies to the States- 
General of 14:84:. Burgesses deprived of exclusive privileges and 
enfranchised serfs thus come together, half way from servitude to 
liberty, and extend the hand to each other. 

All countries have had communes and serfs. France alone has 
already formed out of its entire non-noble population the Third 
Estate, which in the rest of Europe is still in process of formation. 
A new form of society is coming into existence, and France is its 
standard-bearer. 

So those slaves who, in ancient times, were only things, instru- 
ments of labor, instrumentum vocale, bought and sold indiscrimi- 
nately with cattle, horses, and implements, instrumentum mutum : 
who, in the Middle Ages, have recovered their personality and 
become men, now rise still another stage and become citizens. En- 
riched by commerce, enlightened by the knowledge which they have 
acquired at the universities, and prepared for the conduct of public 



XX PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

affairs through the management of municipal interests, they are 
called into political life by Philip the Fair. Little by little they 
install themselves, in the persons of their principal men, in the 
ministry, in the Parliament, in the great council, in the cour des 
comptes, in the cour des aides, in all financial and judicial offices. 
From these they rule the kingdom and sometimes the king : but 
they likewise, in theu- fear of feudalism, direct the king toward 
absolute power or confirm him in it. 

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the States-General, 
in which they are represented, dispose of the crown : they set up 
the king; in 1357 and in 1484 they seemed disposed to set him 
aside. But feudalism was still rich and powerful, the strong au- 
thority of an individual too plainly needed, and these attempts 
failed. Moreover, they had not arisen out of the settled and gen- 
eral consciousness of the nation, but from the bold thought of a few 
men who perceived the frightful miseries in which France was 
plunged. 

Royalty, in fact, forgetting for a moment those who had made 
its fortune, and again becoming chivalrous and feudal, had led the 
country into deep abysses, from which it extricated itself after 
untold sufferings. Warned by this cruel lesson, royalty dismounts 
from its war-horse, lays aside the battle-axe and lance which had 
so ill served Philip VI. and John : it becomes lourgeoise, and recalls 
its plebeian counsellors. The nobility has only disdain and in- 
sults for such men, and from time to time sends them to the scaf- 
fold or into exile and seizes their goods. But these plebeians 
continually advance, sheltering themselves under the royal author- 
ity, which needs their intelligence and has nothing to fear from 
their weakness. Holding in their hands their political gospel, the 
Roman law, they go on, widening the domain of their common law, 
which rests on equality, in opposition to the feudal law which rests 
on privilege, and the day comes when they banish a count of 
Armagnac, condemn to death a duke of Alen9on, burn a marshal 
de Retz, or throw a bastard of Bourbon into the river, sewn up in a 
sack on which they have written, " Make way for the king's justice." 

Whence do they derive this confidence and this strength ? It is 
because they have made the king the great justice-of-the-peace of 
the kingdom and have given him three things, the possession of 
which brings aU the rest : the support of public opinion, money, 
and an army. The Middle Ages knew neither permanent armies 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xxi 

nor permanent taxes. In those times the king lived upon the 
proceeds of his own domain, and had no soldiers, save those which 
his lords brought him for a limited time and limited uses. The 
councillors of Charles VII., going back ten centuries, borrowed 
from the Roman Empire its system of permanent taxes and per- 
manent armies. This system had originated at Rome at the same 
time with absolute power, and had contributed to its establishment. 
It had the same effects in France. Louis XI. completed the de- 
struction of the feudal aristocracy; Charles VIII. and Francis I. 
led it away upon foreign expeditions and accustomed it to military 
discipline in their camps. In the sixteenth century feudalism had 
become simply the French noblesse. 

Under cover of the wars of religion and those consequent on 
the minority of kings, it attempts again to possess itself of power. 
Richelieu brings the loftiest heads to the scaffold and razes the 
last fortresses. Decimated and ruined, the nobility falls back into 
the ante-chambers of Louis XIV., who adorns it with titles and 
decorations, but chains it to the triumphant car of royalty. 

While accomplishing this internal revolution, France was also 
acting upon foreign countries. Charles VIII. by his Italian ex- 
pedition had begun the great wars which, by mingling nations, 
interests, and ideas, had established in respect to politics that 
solidarity of European nations which France had essayed to estab- 
lish at two periods of the Middle Ages ; at the time of the Crusades, 
in respect to religion, at the time of Charlemagne in a first grand 
project of social organization. In the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries she defends the liberties of Europe against the House of 
Austria. Under Louis XIV. she begins herself to threaten them, 
but compensates for it by the prodigious eclat of he. civilization, 
which spreads to the most remote regions. 

At this epoch of unlooked-for greatness, French society has 
taken a new form. The successor of Hugh Capet, the inheritor of 
that humble crown which a few bishops and lords gave and took 
away, now reigns over twenty mUlion men, and signs his ordi- 
nances with the formula, "Such is my good pleasure." Like the 
Roman emperor, he is the living law, lex animata. He goes back 
even further than the Empire, even to those Oriental monarchies 
in which political and religious despotism, in order the better to 
assure the blind obedience of the people, attributes to the monarch 
a portion of divinity. He calls himself the vicar of God upon 



XXU PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

earth, proclaims his divine right, and places himself apart from 
ordinaiy hiimanity. The neighboring nations accept the new 
theory which France is formulating and practising. The divine 
right of kings is everywhere asserted; and Europe with strange 
docility models all its royalties after that of Versailles. Louis XIV. 
is certainly not a great man, but he is assuredly a great king, and 
the greatest that Europe has seen. 

When in the history of the world a considerable phenomenon is 
persistently reproduced, it is inferred that permanent and necessary 
causes are behind it; and these give it legitimacy. But there is 
nothing eternal upon earth. Nations, assemblages of active and 
free beings, have continually new needs ; to them immobility would 
be death. Born of general needs and compelled to satisfy them in 
order to continue in existence, constitutions ought to accommodate 
themselves to the changes which have been effected in ideas and 
habits, like the elastic and supple envelope which, surrounding and 
protecting the growing germ, conforms itself to its growth. In 
order to impose peace and order upon so many discordant wills and 
hostile passions, in order to bring into association so many oppos- 
ing elements, it was necessary that a single power should force all 
the rest into subordination ; it was necessary that the local springs 
of independent life should become extinct, and that France should 
feel itself to be living in the life of one man before it felt the 
national life throbbing in it. In a word, it was necessary that 
Louis XIV. should be able to say, " I am the state," in order that 
Sieyes might be able to reply, " We are the state." 

While royalty, under ideas of divine right, surrounded by legiti- 
mate homages, was ascending that Capitolian Hill to which the 
Tarpeian Rock is so near, a silent and slow movement was still 
going on in the lower strata of society. The Middle Ages, in the 
midst of their anarchy and their violence, had had great and influ- 
ential maxims of public rights ; no tax could be raised save with 
the consent of the taxed, no law was valid unless accepted by those 
who would owe obedience to it, no sentence legal unless rendered 
by the peers of the accused. These principles and many others, 
though opposed and stifled, incessantly reappeared. There is 
always some voice which recalls them to mind and prevents their 
lapsing through prescription; it is the Sire de Pecquigny in the 
States of 1357, the Sire de la Eoche in those of 1484, and many 
others in the States of Orleans and of Pontoise, in the two assem- 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xxiii 

blies of Blois, and especially in that of 1614, whose cahiers include 
almost all the demands of 1789. Thus the tradition of public 
securities and national rights was never lost. Each generation 
transmitted it to the generation succeeding, and so the tradition 
went on growing stronger from age to age as the national life de- 
veloped and the feeling for general interests rose above the feeling 
for particular interests. 

The kings had heard with entire displeasure this voice of the 
deputies of the country. In order to stifle it, they ceased after 
1614 to call them together. "It is not good," said Louis XIV., 
"that any one should speak in the name of all." But even from 
the foot of the throne this voice still spoke, feeble and timid, yet 
powerful through the echoes which it awakened. The Parliament, 
the king's court, tried to rise out of the obscurity of its judicial 
functions, and aspired to a political role. It assumed the position 
of natural protector of the people ; and if in times before Louis 
XIV. it kept silent, after him it grew bold to the point of filling 
the whole eighteenth century with its quarrels with the court. 

Alone, the Parliament would have been powerless. An aris- 
tocracy of officials, it could speak for the people, but could not 
make them act. But the national education had been effected, by 
the work of hands and brains. The Third Estate had in each gen- 
eration gained in wealth and intelligence. In the Middle Ages 
there had been but one form of wealth, — landed property, — and this 
the lords possessed. Free labor had finally created another, — capi- 
tal, — and this was in the hands of the burgesses. With leisure 
came study and enlightenment. France had not had Luther and his 
religious reformation, which would have pushed it backward, but 
it had had Descartes and his philosophical reformation, which had 
urged it forward. It had remained Catholic without having the 
Inquisition, and a renaissance, almost as brilliant as that of Italy, 
had opened to the minds of men the paths in which lay art and 
science and truth. All these great movements produced in intel- 
ligent minds an awakening which, with the fortunate concurrence 
of men of genius, brought to France the greatest age of her litera- 
ture, and secured to her, for the second time, the intellectual 
supremacy over Europe. Louis XIV., arriving in the midst of this 
brilliant expansion of the French intellect, gave it order and disci- 
pline; but the noble regard which he showed for those whose only 
gifts were those of intelligence reacted against his own political 



xxiv PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

system. Corneille, in the palace of Richelieu, was little more than 
a servant employed to make verses ; Racine, Boileau, Moliere, were 
almost the friends of the great king. It shows a curious connec- 
tion of influences, that Louis XIV., the establisher of absolute mon- 
archy, was obliged to encourage industry and literature, the two 
forces destined to cast down what he was building up ; for the one 
gave the Third Estate the wealth which led it to demand guarantees ; 
the other, the intelligence which led it to lay claim to rights. 

In the seventeenth centuiy literature was confined to artistic 
effort; opposition, to the sphere of religious beliefs. The leaders 
of the opposition were the Protestants and the Jansenists; the 
great pamphlet of the age was written against the Jesuits. In the 
eighteenth century, absolutism having endangered these material 
interests which commerce and industry were every day multiplying, 
the opposition extended to the domain of political ideas, and litera- 
ture, as the expression of this new need, invaded everything and 
claimed a right to regulate everything. The most masculine forces 
of the French mind seemed to be wholly devoted to the seeking of 
the public weal, and sought not to write fine verses, but to utter fine 
maxims. They depicted the absurdities of the social organization, 
not in order to laugh at them, but in order to change society itself. 
Literature became a weapon which every one, the imprudent as well 
as the skilful, tried to use, and which, incessantly striking blows on 
all sides, inflicted terrible and incurable wounds. By a strange 
inconsequence, those who had most to suffer from this invasion of 
politics by literary men were the loudest in their applause. The 
society of the eighteenth century, frivolous, sensual, and selfish as 
it was, nevertheless maintained in the midst of its vices a sincere 
devotion to the things of the mind. Never were salons so ani- 
mated, manners so exquisite, conversation so brilliant. Talent had 
place there almost as its birthright, and the nobility, with a chival- 
rous temerity like that of Fontenoy, invited, with a smile upon its 
lips, the fire of those ardent polemics which the sons of the bourgeois 
directed against them. 

Then begins a vast inquest. Some seek out and note the vices 
of the social organization ; they lift the veil behind which are con- 
cealed the deep sores which are enervating and exhausting the 
country, and will kill it if not healed. Others even make no ac- 
count of the old edifice in which society has so long been sheltered ; 
in thought they cast it down, and desire upon the cleared ground to 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XXV 

build up a new society. These voices from France are heard be- 
yond its frontiers ; governments awaken, kings and ministers set 
themselves to work, dig canals, make roads and encourage industry, 
commerce, and agriculture. Everywhere men speak of justice and 
beneficence. But France, which has sounded the alarm, shown 
the danger, pointed out the remedy and impelled the princes to 
undertake one part of the task, — material reforms, — can for her- 
self obtain nothing. Turgot and Necker are dismissed as danger- 
ous visionaries ; even Calonne falls when he begins to speak of 
reforms. The old regime, unwilling to give up anything, loses 
everything. The Revolution breaks out, and proclaims the ideas 
which are to-day the foundations of our public and private law, 
which the Republic and the Empire, by their victories, disseminated 
in every part of Europe, and which are destined to spread over the 
whole world because they are summed up in the one word justice. 

It has often been said that the distinctive characteristic of the 
literary genius of France is good sense, rationality ; I would add, 
from a certain point of view, impersonality; for Rabelais and 
Montaigne, Descartes and Moliere, Pascal, Voltaire, and Montes- 
quieu write for the whole world quite as much as for their own 
land. The end which they seek is the true, their personal enemy 
the false, and the immortal types which they sketch, belong to 
humanity even more than to France. In this sense our literature, 
like our arts, is of all literatures the most human, because it is the 
least exclusively national. 

This is also the distinctive characteristic of the political genius 
of France and of its history. That which is extreme does not 
long continue there. Feudalism stops and retreats before having 
made the country another Germany, the communes undergo a 
transformation before having made it another Italy, so that we 
have been subjected neither to that feudal anarchy from which 
the one has escaped only in our own time, nor to that municipal 
anarchy which so long delivered over the other to foreign domina- 
tion. Absolute monarchy, necessary in order to clear the ground, 
could not by its divine right maintain itself forever, as it expected 
to do, nor can radicalism make itself eternal by what it dares to 
call its revolutionary right. 

This oscillating and continual advance is what makes the charm 
of French history, because in it is recognized the advance of 
humanity itself. It is not that France has led the world ; but it 



XXvi PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

has often had its post in the advance-guard and has held aloft the 
flag by which others have often been guided. They have followed 
afar off, trying to resist the powerful influence ; they have spoken 
loudly of our faults and of oui- mistakes; they have awakened 
their most patriotic traditions and exalted their national glories ; 
but the fi-rst language which they learned after that of home was 
ours, and the first glance which they directed outside of their own 
boundaries and their own history fell upon France. 

After the battle of Salamis, the Greek chieftains met to decide 
the bestowal of the prize of valor. Each assigned to himself the 
first, but all awarded the second to Themistocles. 



HISTORY OF FRANCE. 

INTRODUCTION. 

GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OP GAUL. 

Boundaries. — The Ocean and the Mediterranean, the 
Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Ehine formed in ancient times 
the limits of Gaul, a fourth larger than the France of to- 
day. Not till 843 did France retire behind the Meuse and 
the Ehone. She has not ceased to reclaim her ancient her- 
itage. She has recovered the barrier of the Alps, accepted 
that of the Jura on the east, and till lately had a frontier 
of forty leagues upon the Rhine. But on the northeast 
there has remained that wide opening through which all 
invasions have come and which has required the greatest 
efforts for its defence. 

General Aspect. — This vast and well-defined territory 
forms an inclined plane, sloping from the summit of the 
Alps to the ocean. Its upper portion, backed by the central 
chain of the greater Alps, with Mont Blanc as the apex, is 
comprised within two and a half degrees of latitude. But 
the country widens as it descends towards the ocean, and 
from the mouth of the Rhine to that of the Adoiir it occu- 
pies a space of nine degrees. The Pyrenees also, on the 
French side, descend in a gentle slope towards the Atlantic. 

There are thus two distinct regions. In the south and 
southeast are mountains, forests and pastures, lakes and 
impetuous rivers, populations sober, laborious, little used 
to manufacturing, but essentially military. To the west 
and the north are gently undulating hills and fertile valleys, 
open plains, and navigal3le rivers, marshes and landes, indus- 
trial cities and ports. Yet the great valleys of the Rhine 
and the Rhone traverse the mountainous region of the east, 
while the last spurs of the mountains extend far into the 



2 INTBODUCTION. 

west : so that Auvergne, in the centre of France, has, like 
the Alps, its shepherds and goatherds, while the valleys of 
the Rhone and the Ehine have, like those of the great 
western rivers, their great trading and manufacturing towns. 
This parallelism is the foundation of the national unity of 
France ; for if the east had had only mountaineers and the 
west only sailors, two nations would have been formed in 
France. 

The Cevennes and the Vosges. — The characteristic feature 
of the French land is the long chain of the Cevennes and 
the Vosges. Entirely enclosed within the territory of 
France, they form, as it were, its backbone. But while 
they determine the direction of its rivers, they sink low 
enough at various places to allow the passage of roads, 
canals, and railways. 

The Cevennes, properly speaking, belong only to the 
department of Loz^re. But they extend their spurs and 
their name, on the one side toward the neighborhood of 
Castelnaudary, where they meet the last hills of the Pyre- 
nees, and on the other, to the neighborhood of ChMon, 
where they encounter the heights of the C6te-d'0r, which 
unite the Cevemies with the Vosges. The highest moun- 
tains of the Vosges have an altitude of 1431 meters, the 
highest of the Cevennes an altitude of 1774 meters. Taken 
together, the Cevennes and the Vosges form a chain 960 
kilometers long and 280 kilometers wide at the broadest 
part. 

Western Spurs of the Cevennes. — This chain has a steep 
escarpment on the east toward the Sadne and the Rhone ; 
but on the western side branch out the mountains of Velay 
and Forez, which separate the Loire from the Allier, and, 
further south, a loftier group, which joins the Cevennes to 
the high mountains of Auvergne, where the Puy de Sancy 
rises to the height of 1897 meters. From the latter group 
ramify all the heights that cover the country between the 
Garonne and the Loire, the undulating surface of Quercy, 
Perigord, and Limousin. In Auvergne, three hundred cra- 
ters of now extinct volcanoes have been counted. 

Ramifications of the Cote-d'Or. — To the mountains of 
Burgundy are joined the hills of Morvan and Mvernais, 
which separate the Seine and the Loire. Behind Orleans, 
these heights broaden out into a vast plateau, and then rise 
into a little chain, which farther on divides : its two 



GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF GAUL. 3 

branches form the framework of the two bold peninsulas of 
the Cotentin and Brittany, with their great military har- 
bors of Brest and Cherbourg. 

The Argonne and the Ardennes. — From the plateau of 
Langres extend the Argonne and the Ardennes, which 
enclose the Meuse. The Ardennes cross that river, and 
between the sources of the Somme, the Scheldt, and the 
Sambre, form a mountain-knot from which branch out the 
hills of Picardy and the Pays de Caux, those of Artois and 
the Boulonnais, and those of Belgium. The eastern Ar- 
dennes, a wild and marshy plateau (698 meters), join the 
volcanic hills to the eastward, of which the remotest heights 
overlook the Rhine. 

Northern Extremity of the Vosges. — The Vosges also 
extend to the Rhine, between Speyer and Mainz. Closely 
confined by the parallel streams of the Moselle and the 
Rhine, the Vosges do not have extensive ramifications. On 
the side toward Alsace, their hills are still covered with 
feudal ruins, contrasting picturesquely with the busy man- 
ufacturing towns of the plain. 

Interior Valleys ; the Moselle, the Meuse, the Somme. — 
The valleys of France are of two classes, those wholly 
within French territory, rising in the Cevennes and the 
Vosges, and those which have their sources beyond the 
frontier. The first have been the cradle of the French 
nation and genius : by the others the foreign influences 
have come in. 

The eastern slope of the Cevennes gives rise to insignifi- 
cant streams only, but to the west and to the north flow large 
rivers, sprung from the centre of the land : the Moselle, 
which flows toward the lower Rhine; the Meuse, which 
gives France an outlet into the North Sea ; the Scheldt, the 
estuary of which forms at Antwerp the best harbor in the 
north of Europe ; the Somme ; and finally the Seine and 
the Loire, the two great French rivers, upon whose banks 
the nationality was born and grew up. 

The Loire. — The Loire, so dangerous because of its sud- 
den floods and its shifting shallows, has its sources upon a 
high mountain in the Vivarais, 1400 meters above the level 
of the sea. The Allier brings it a part of the waters of 
Auvergne, the Cher those of Berry, the Vienne part of 
the waters of Limousin and Poitou, the Mayenne those of 
Maine, Anjou, and Perche. In spite of the considerable vol- 
ume of its waters, it is not navigable above St. Nazaire. 



4 INTR OD UCTION. 

The Seine. — The Seine, rising in the C6te-d'0r, is fed by- 
all the streams of Orleanais, Western Burgundy, Champagne, 
Picardy, and Normandy. Its principal aifluents are the 
Yonne, the Marne, and the Oise, into which the waters of 
the Aisne have flowed. Below the Marne and above the 
Oise, in the centre of the basin, stands Paris. The river, by 
modern improvements, has been made navigable up to the 
city itself. 

Exterior Valleys. — The valleys of the Garonne, the Ehone, 
and the Rhine are exterior or eccentric, for these three 
rivers have their sources outside of Prench territory. They 
have also been the last to be attached to the kingdom, the 
first in 1271 and 1453, the second in 1481, the third in 1648. 
Since the loss of Alsace Prance no longer touches the Rhine. 
If the provinces acquired three centuries ago contributed 
little to the formation of Prench nationality, they completed 
it admirably, bringing it almost to its natural limits. And 
all the activity of Prance extended itself out into these ex- 
tremities also, which have ever since been filled Avith a 
fuller and more brilliant life than the old provinces, none 
of whose towns compare with Bordeaux, Marseilles, Miil- 
hausen, and Strassburg. 

The Valley of the Garonne, and the Pyrenean Isthmus. — 
The valley of the Garonne has, between the Pyrenees and 
the mountains of Auvergne, a width of 300 kilometers. 
Prom the Tarn, the Lot, the Dordogne, and other streams 
the river receives so considerable a quantity of water, that 
at Bordeaux it is seven or eight hundred meters wide. 

The Pyrenean Isthmus, between the Gulf of Lyons and 
the Bay of Biscay, measures 320 kilometers. But in a diago- 
nal direction it is traversed for two-thirds of its extent by 
the Garonne, one of the finest rivers of Prance, forming 
'an admirable line of natural navigation. Prom the bend of 
the Garonne at Toulouse, to the Aude, which flows into the 
Mediterranean, is a distance of only 80 kilometers, with but 
a slight elevation intervening. Here, according to Strabo, 
lay one of the great routes of Gallic commerce. The Romans, 
and later the Visigoths, pursued this route in order to reach 
Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Poitiers. The Pranks traversed 
the same road in the opposite direction to reach Narbonne. 
Here now passes the Languedoc canal. 

This magnificent valley ought to have two great cities, 
the one maritime, the other agricultural and industrial : for 



GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF GAUL. 5 

this phenomenon is found in the case of all our rivers. The 
Ehone has Lyons and Marseilles ; the Loire, Orleans and 
Nantes ; the Seine, Paris and Rouen and Havre. Identical 
causes explain this singular parallelism. Life is naturally- 
concentrated at two points to correspond to the double pur- 
pose which the river serves : the exploitation of the sea and 
that of the land. On the Garonne these two cities are Bor- 
deaux and Toulouse. 

The Valley of the Rhone ; the Camargue. — The Ehone has 
a longer but narrower valley. It rises in the glacier of La 
Furea. In the Valais, its basin is often only a league wide, 
at St. Maurice only a few yards. Further on lies Lake Leman, 
the most beautiful lake in Europe. There the space widens, 
the valley enlarges. But three leagues below Geneva, at 
Fort I'Ecluse, the Ehone again traverses a very narrow 
gorge. After it has turned the extremity of the Jura, its 
basin at last extends from the Alps to the Cevennes, but the 
valley is still narrow, and the river itself preserves a capri- 
cious and dangerous character. From Lyons to the sea it 
flows with the swiftness of an arrow. In vain are its borders 
embanked ; it breaks through the embankment and spreads 
desolation far and wide, especially when a south wind has 
rapidly melted the snows of winter, or when abundant rains 
have fallen upon the Alps. 

The detritus which the Ehone thus receives, it carries 
along its course, strewn with numerous shallows, down to 
the Mediterranean, into which it carries every year 20,- 
000,000 cubic meters of solid matter. All the space from 
Aries to the sea has thus been filled up. A delta of sand 
and gravel, 74,000 hectares in extent, called the Camargue, 
forces the Ehone to divide into several branches, of which 
only one is at present navigable ; and even it is closed by a 
bar which makes entrance extremely difiicurt. Therefore 
the great port of the Ehone valley is not at the mouth of 
the river, bvit fifty miles farther east, at Marseilles. 

Tributaries of the Rhone. — The Ehone receives from the 
Cevennes small streams only, which, however, are subject to 
formidable floods. But the Jura sends it the Ain ; the Alps, 
the Durance and the Is^re. The Durance, though 320 kilo- 
meters long, is only a capricious and devastating torrent. 
The rocks and sands which it carries down, the rapidity of 
its course, its sudden changes, make it unsuited to naviga- 
tion. Yet it was in the basin of the Durance that all the 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

old Gallic cities not situated on the seacoast or on the 
Rhone arose. The Ts^re enters the Ehone at Grenoble. Its 
overflows, though less frequent than those of the Durance, 
have sometimes been more terrible. If there were no other 
tributaries, the Ehone might be a good line of military de- 
fence behind the Alps : it would never have had a vital 
importance for commerce and politics. But by means of the 
Sa6ne its basin opens toward Burgundy and Champagne, 
and by this means the products and the ideas of old Prance 
are imported into the provinces traversed by the Ehone. 
The Sadne is therefore one of the great arteries of the 
country, a connecting link between the southeast and the 
north : at its confluence with the Ehone stands the largest 
city of France after Paris, the city of Lyons. 

The Valley of the Ehine. — The courses of the Ehine and 
the Ehone are mutually symmetrical. Eising upon ojdjdo- 
site slopes of the St. Gothard, they flow rapidly away, the 
one toward the north, the other toward the west. Near 
Bregenz, the Ehine enters Lake Constance, just as the Ehone 
enters the Lake of Geneva. Each turns an extremity of the 
Jura, the one then impinging upon the C^vennes, the other 
upon the Vosges, which force them to assume their final 
directions, the one toward the Mediterranean, the other 
toward the North Sea. 

Less swift and impetuous, the Ehine makes longer detours. 
From Basel to the neighborhood of Mainz, its course is im- 
peded by the numerous islands which have so often facili- 
tated the passage of the river by armies. Further down, 
the beauty of its scenery, its towns, the rich culture of its 
slopes, the feudal ruins upon its heights, make this valley 
one of the most beautiful in Europe. Below Cologne, the 
Ehine flows gently towards Holland, increased by the 
Neckar, the Main, and the Moselle. Like the Ehone, it 
divides into several branches, of which the Waal and the 
Lech join the Meuse, the Yssel flows into the Zuyder Zee, 
while the branch which continues to bear the name of Ehine 
has at Leyden, after a course of 1200 kilometers, only the 
width of a large canal. The Waal and the Lech put the 
Ehine into communication with the great estuary of the 
Meuse, and thus throw it open to navigation. 

Communication between the River Basins. — The C6vennes 
and the Vosges are not so high as to prevent inter-communi- 
cation. In the south they permit the passage of the Lan- 



GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF GAUL. 7 

guedoc canal ; in the centre, of those of Charolais and 
Burgundy ; in the north, of that connecting the Marne with 
the Rhine. Their outlying spurs present still less serious 
obstacles. Canals have been constructed which connect the 
Seine with the Loire, the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Sadne, 
and the Rhone ; the Rhone with the Rhine and the Garonne ; 
the Marne and the Meuse with the Sa6ne. 

Great Lines of Depression and Population of the French 
Territory. — The general outlines of Erance run parallel to 
the equator and the meridians. Its frontier from Bayonne 
to Antibes runs in the direction of the parallels of latitude. 
The western shores of the Bay of Biscay and the Cotentin, 
and on the east, the line of the Alps, the Jura, and the Rhine, 
almost exactly follow two meridians. The great interior 
routes take the same direction. Thus if one were to trace 
upon a map of France a square having its four corners at 
Caen, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Dunkirk, and having as 
diagonals two curved lines drawn from Marseilles to Havre 
and from Bordeaux to Strassburg, he would have marked 
the great lines of depression of the soil of Gaul, those which 
the great roads, railroads, and canals now in use or pro- 
jected have followed. Herein lies the explanation of some 
of the facts of history. These hollows of the mountains, 
these depressions of the soil, afford, in fact, the only and 
natural pathways which men have long followed. War, 
commerce, ideas, and, in a word, the whole life of nations, 
have passed along these natural paths. At their entrances, 
at their exits, and at their middle points, great cities have 
arisen like so many halting-places for merchants and for 
armies, like so many luminous points from which civiliza- 
tion has radiated all around. The great lines of depression 
of the soil have been not only the great lines of commu- 
nication and population, but also the great paths of French 
unity and nationality. If there had been high mountains 
between all the great rivers of France, the inhabitants of 
each valley would for long ages have formed a separate 
nation. In hermetically enclosed valleys, life is exclusive 
and patriotism local. The least open of the great valleys 
of France, that of the Garonne, has also been the one whose 
population has most energetically resisted centralizing influ- 
ences. The Loire and the Seine, on the contrary, between 
which communication is so easy, have almost always fol- 
lowed the same laws. Paris and Orleans were the two patri- 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

monial cities of the French kings, and the first acquisition 
made by reviving royalty was Bourges. The Valois even 
seemed to hesitate between the two rivers. Blois and Tours 
were for some time the capitals of Henry III. and Henry IV. 
The Sadne, too, has almost always been dependent upon the 
Seine. Burgundy scarcely ever had any other than Cape- 
tian dukes. Lyons, Grenoble, and Montpellier were in the 
hands of the French king a century before Bordeaux. 

Unity and Central Situation of the French Territory. — 
One of the great causes of the physical, and therefore of 
the moral unity of France is, assuredly, this facility of com- 
munication between its different valleys. They descend to 
all the seas, yet are easily connected one with another. 
There is unity in variety, the best condition for the devel- 
opment of a great society and a powerful civilization. Va- 
riety of climate and natural productions is included. More- 
over, if France is not in a material sense the centre of 
Europe, it nevertheless occupies a position central with 
respect to the European waters, the Mediterranean, the Bay 
of Biscay, the Channel, and the North Sea, and with respect 
to the principal nations of the Continent, Spain, Italy, Switz- 
erland, Germany, and England. Hence have come its long 
wars and the dangers which it has so often encountered, 
but hence also has come the influence it has so often exerted 
abroad. 



FIRST PERIOD. 

Gaul Independent. — To 50 b.c. 

CHAPTER I. 

PRIMITIVE POPULATIONS: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 
(To 125 B.C.) 

Primitive Populations. — Unknown races at first inliabited 
Gaul, at the same time with the reindeer and the mammoth, 
and remains of prehistoric man have frequently been found 
in caves, — his arms, his implements of bone or stone, and 
even his rude drawings, — mingled with remains of animals 
now extinct. At the dawn of history Gaul appears divided 
among three or four hundred tribes belonging to the great 
families of the Celts and the Iberians. 

The Celts. — The Celts had marched westward at an un- 
known epoch from the plaing of Central Asia, where they 
had been associated with the ancestors of the Greeks, the 
Italians, the Slavs, and the Germans. During this march 
numerous bodies halted in the valley of the Danube and all 
along the Alps, while the head of the column advanced 
westward to the shores of the Atlantic. Brittany and Ire- 
land also became part of their domain. Over this vast ter- 
ritory the Celts extended their settlements and multiplied. 
Their language shows the relationship which united the 
Celts or Gauls with the great family of Indo-European na- 
tions. This language is still spoken in Brittany, in Wales, 
in the Highlands of Scotland, and in Ireland. The Belgae, 
whom some have regarded as a distinct race, occupied 
Northern Gaul about 600 b.c. 

The Iberians or Basques. — The Celts had found a people 
established in Gaul before their arrival, the Iberians, who, 



10 PRIMITIVE POPULATIONS: 

under the name of Aquitanians, were gradually pushed back 
to the south of the Garonne. Their language, the Basque, 
still spoken in the Pyrenees, is related to that of the Finns. 

The Phoenicians and Greeks. — The adventurous navi- 
gators of Tyre and Carthage, who so early voyaged around 
all the shores of the Mediterranean, appeared also at the 
mouths of the Rhone. At first they traded along the coast, 
then advanced into the interior of the country. The Greeks, 
following the Phoenicians into the western Mediterranean, 
ended by supplanting them in Gaul. The Rhodians estab- 
lished themselves at the mouths of the Ehone, while the 
Phoenician colonies of the interior were falling into the 
hands of the natives. About the year 600 the Phocseans 
founded Marseilles. 

Character, Manners, and Customs of Gaul. — All the Celtic 
and Belgian tribes had customs very nearly alike, and in 
the eyes of foreigners they formed but one single people. 
The Greeks aixl Romans noted especially their courage. 
" It is an indomitable race," said they, '' which makes war 
not only upon men, but upon nature and the gods ; they 
shoot their arrows up against the sky when it thunders : 
they take arms against tempests : they march with sword 
in hand against overflowing rivers or the angry ocean." 
Their nature was as generous as brave. " Every one," says 
Strabo, '' resents injuries done to his neighbor, and so keenly 
that they all assemble to take revenge for them." 

Diodorus Siculus describes the Gauls as tall, with fair 
complexions and light hair. "The nobles," he says, "shave 
their beards, but let their moustaches grow. They take 
their feasts seated upon the skins of wolves or dogs ; whole 
quarters of meat are provided. They honor the brave by 
offering them the best portions. They are hospitable but 
quarrelsome, and are much given to hyperbole. They are 
intelligent, and susceptible to instruction. The}' also have 
poets who are called bards, and who sing the praise or the 
blame of men, accompanying themselves upon an instrument 
resembling a lyre. ..." 

Costumes, Arms, and Mode of Fighting. — "The Gauls," 
he says, "wear tunics of variegated color, breeches, and 
plaid cloaks attached to their shoulders by clasps. Por de- 
fensive armor they have shields as tall as a man, artistically 
decorated, and brazen helmets fantastically adorned. Some 
of them confine their tunics with eirdles of gold and silver. 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 11 

Their swords are nearly as long as the javelins of other 
nations, and the heavy pikes which they throw have points 
longer than their swords. In travel and in battle many of 
them make use of two-horse chariots. They hurl the lance, 
and then at once alight to attack the eneaiy with the sword. 
Some of them despise death to such a degree that they rush 
into battle without other covering than a girdle around the 
body. Before joining battle they challenge individual ene- 
mies to single combat, sing the prowess of their ancestors, 
vaunt their own valor, and insult their adversaries. They 
cut off the heads of their vanquished enemies and preserve 
them as trophies." 

Various Customs. — Women were free in the choice of 
their husbands, to whom they brought a dowry. The hus- 
band had rights of life and death over his wife and over his 
children. " The funerals of their chieftains," says Caesar, 
" are magnificent. Whatever is supposed to have been dear 
to the deceased is thrown upon the funeral pyre, even ani- 
mals. A little time before the expedition of Caesar it was 
still the custom to burn with the dead the slaves and re- 
tainers whom he was known to have loved." 

Religion. — The G-auls at first worshipped the thunder, 
stars, the ocean, rivers, lakes, the wind, — in a word, the for- 
ces of nature. Later, the Druids undoubtedly taught the peo- 
ple to worship moral and intelligent forces : Hesus, the Grod 
of War ; Teutates, the God of Commerce and inventor of the 
arts ; and Ogmius, the God of Poetry and Eloquence. The 
feast of Teutates was celebrated on the first night of the 
new year, in the forest, by the light of torches. To Hesus 
they often, before the battle, dedicated the spoils of the 
enemy, and, after the victory, they sacrificed to him what 
remained of the cattle which they had captured. 

The Druids. — The priests of the Gauls, the Druids, had 
elevated beliefs, including a doctrine of rewards and punish- 
ments in the future life. But horrible superstitions, human 
sacrifices, stained the rude altars which they raised in the 
depths of ancestral forests or in the midst of desolate plains. 
" The Gauls," says Caesar, " think that the life of a man 
must be paid to secure that of another man, and that the 
immortal gods can be appeased only at this price : they 
have even instituted public sacrifices of this sort. They 
sometimes weave, of osiers, large constructions resembling 
the human figure, which they fill with living men: they 



12 PRIMITIVE POPULATIONS: 

then set fire to it and cause their victims to perish in the 
flames." 

All the Druids had a single chief whose authority was 
unlimited. His successor was elected by the other Druids. 
" At a certain period in the year they assemble in a conse- 
crated place on the frontier of the territory of the Carnutes, 
which is regarded as the central point of all Gaul, and there 
their disputes are settled, but their doctrine is believed to 
have originated in Britain. The Druids do not go to war, 
and pay no taxes. To enter this order it is necessary to 
learn a great number of verses, and there are those who 
pass twenty years in this novitiate. It is not allowed to 
commit these verses to writing, though, in most other public 
and private affairs, the Greek" letters are used. A belief 
which they especially seek to establish is that the souls of 
men do not perish, but after death pass from one body to 
another, a belief which seems to them especially adapted to 
inspire courage, by removing the fear of death. The move- 
ments of the stars, the immensity of the universe, the great- 
ness of the earth, the nature of things, the power of the 
immortal gods, such are the subjects of their discussions 
and teachings." 

Bards, Soothsayers, and Prophetesses. — Associated with 
the order of Druids, we find bards, soothsayers, and proph- 
etesses. These last redoubtable magicians loved to live 
upon wild promontories beaten by a stormy sea. The sooth- 
sayers were charged with all the material affairs of worship. 
It was they who sought for revelations of the future in the 
entrails of victims or by consulting the flight of birds. A 
Gaul undertook no important act without having recourse 
to their divinations. While the power of the Druids was 
undisputed, the bards were the sacred poets, called upon at 
all religious ceremonies. They celebrated the praises of the 
powerful and rich military chieftains. From singers of the 
gods and heroes, they became the courtiers of men. At the 
tables of the great they paid by their verses for the privilege 
of entertainment. 

Druidical Monuments. — Monuments called druidical are 
still found in great numbers in the western provinces of 
France. First, there are the menhirs, enormous blocks of 
rough stone fixed in the soil, isolated or ranged in avenues 
like those of Carnac. The cromlechs were menhirs ranged in 
a circle or in several concentric circles: the dolmens were rude 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 13 

altars formed by one or several great flat stones, placed hori- 
zontally upon upright stones. These singular monuments, 
though called druidical, are really due to an earlier period, 
and are, in fact, the grand architecture of the stone age. 
Sometimes they bear rude carvings and various symbols, — 
crescents, round holes arranged in circles, spirals, and figures, 
which perhaps represent animals, or trees with interlacing 
branches. A large number of these megalithic monuments 
are found in Brittany, along the Loire, in Poitou, Auvergne, 
and the Cevennes : but they are also to be found in other 
parts of the world, and are the work of very various popu- 
lations, representing, at very different epochs, a similar stage 
of civilization. Tumuli, or mounds of earth heaped up over 
a tomb, are also found in France. 

Ideas are as durable as granite. Some relics of druidical 
ceremony were still practised, not two centuries ago, in the 
forests of Dauphiny ; and many traces of them might even 
now be found in the remoter parts of the provinces. 

Government. — The Druids, ministers of a sanguinary 
worship and sole depositories of all knowledge, long held 
sway through intellectual superiority and religious terror. 
About three centuries before our era the chiefs of the tribes 
and the nobles, by a bloody revolution, threw off the yoke 
of the priestly caste. But after its victory the military aris- 
tocracy found two enemies : some of their number made 
themselves kings ; elsewhere the inferior classes, especially 
the inhabitants of the towns, rose in revolt. The Druids 
took sides with the rebels against the nobles, and in most 
of the tribes aristocratic and royal government was abolished 
and replaced by democratic governments of varied consti- 
tution. 

State of Gaul in 58 B.C. — This revolution had just been 
accomplished when Caesar entered Gaul. He found in the 
country, he tells us, only two sorts of men who were honored : 
the Druids and the nobles. " As for the multitude, their 
lot is little better than that of slaves. The Druids, as minis- 
ters of divine things, perform the public sacrifices and are 
the judges of the people. If an individual does not submit 
to their decision, they interdict him from the sacrifices : this 
is the rarest of punishments among them. Those who in- 
cur this interdiction are avoided by all: all privileges of 
justice are refused them, and they 'have no part in any 
honors. 



14 PRIMITIVE POPULATIONS. 

" The second class is that of the nobles, who, in the fre- 
quent times of war, are surrounded by numbers of retainers 
proportioned to the distinction of their birth and wealth. 
Some of these retainers devote themselves to their chief- 
tain for life or death. They share all the goods of life with 
those to whom they have thus devoted themselves : if the 
chief dies a violent death, they share his fate, and kill 
themselves with their own hands : and it has not yet oc- 
curred within the memory of man that one of those who 
have devoted themselves to a chieftain by su.ch an agree- 
ment has refused, when the chief has died, to accompany 
him in death at once." There were general assemblies in 
which public affairs were discussed. 

Industry; Commerce. — The Phoenicians and the Greeks 
had taught the Gauls the art of mining. The JEdui (in 
Burgundy) had manufactures of gold and silver, the Bituri- 
ges (in Berry) of iron. The Bituriges and Arverni prac- 
tised the art of welding tin to copper. The ^dui invented 
metal plating. Gaul was not less distinguished for the arts 
of weaving and knitting : its dyes were not without reputa- 
tion. In agriculture the Gauls devised the wheel plough 
and the use of marl as a manu.re. They composed various 
sorts of fermented drinks : and many of their coins are 
extant. 

Commerce could not be highly active, for there were but 
few objects of exchange, yet the Sequani (Franche-Comte) 
sent salted provisions down the Sa6ne and the Ehone to 
Marseilles, whence they were exported to Italy and Greece. 
Gaul also exported coarse cloths, and had a considerable 
trade with Britain. 



MIGRATIONS OF THE GAULS. 15 



CHAPTER 11. 

MIGRATIONS OF THE GAULS. 
(To 133 B.C.) 

Invasion of Spain. — Led on by their warlike spirit, the 
Celts of the valley of the Danube and of G-aul fell upon all 
the neighboring countries. They went to seek their for- 
tune beyond the Alps and beyond the Pyrenees, in G-reece, 
and even in Asia. Having pushed back the Aquitanians 
from the banks of the Loire to those of the Garonne, they 
made their way, at a period of unknown antiquity, into 
Spain. The Celtiberians of a later time, the people who 
made the most vigorous resistance to the Romans, were a 
mixture of Celts and Iberians. 

Invasion of Italy (687 b.o.) ; Capture of Rome (390 e.g.). — 
About the year 587 the Insubres, the Cenomani, the Boii, 
and the Senones. invaded and conquered the north of Italy. 
Their wars with the Romans were long and sanguinary : 
alone among all the. enemies of Rome they scaled those 
walls which Pyrrhus and Hannibal were barely able to view 
from a distance. In 390 e.g. 30,000 Senones invaded Etruria 
and demanded lands from the inhabitants of Clusium, who 
shut their gates and implored the assistance of Rome. The 
senate sent three ambassadors, the three Fabii, to interpose 
their mediation. Irritated at their reception, and forgetting 
their character of ambassadors, the Fabii took part with the 
besieged in a sortie. 

Immediately the barbarians broke off their hostilities 
against Clusium and demanded reparation from Rome. 
But all reparation was refused. At news of this the Senones, 
re-enforced by other bands, marched on Rome, and inflicted 
a tremendous defeat on the Romans on the banks of the 
river AUia, near the city. The inhabitants retired to the 
citadel, or deserted the city in panic, and the Gauls entered 
it without opposition. But the Capitol still held out. The 
barbarians attemjjted to scale it, but the Romans had little 
difficulty in repulsing them, and they were obliged to under- 



16 MIGRATIONS OF THE GAULS. 

take a blockade. For seven months, it is said, the Gauls 
encamped amid the ruins of Eome. A night attack on the 
Capitol was frustrated by Manlius : but ]3rovisions became 
exhausted, and Camillus, who had been proclaimed dictator 
by the Eomans at Veil, did not a^Dpear. The military 
tribune, Sulpicius, agreed with the generalissimo of the 
Gauls, who was summoned back to his own country by an 
attack of the Veneti, that the Gauls should withdraw on 
payment of a ransom of a thousand pounds of gold. 

The barbarians withdrew : but Camillus annulled the 
treaty by virtue of his authority as dictator. Some slight 
successes vv'^ere gained over the retreating Gauls. Roman 
vanity took advantage of them to assert in after ages a vic- 
tory so complete that not a single barbarian had escaped 
the avenging sword of the soldiers of Camillus. 

War of Rome against the Cisalpine Gauls (283 b.c.-192 
B.C.). — Rome could not take revenge until a century later. 
In 283 the consul Dolabella penetrated into the country of 
the Senones with superior forces. He burned their vil- 
lages, killed the men, sold the womgn and children, and did 
not leave the country until he had made it a desert. Yet it 
was not until 232 that Rome dared to order the distribution 
among its poor citizens of the lands taken from this nation. 
The Boii refused to alloAv the Romans to settle so near 
them, and at their summons almost all the Cisalpine Gauls 
took the field. A formidable army marched on Rome. 
Terror was at its height in the city. All Italy was aroused 
to repulse the Gauls. They came within three days' journey 
of the city; but, enclosed between two armies near Cape 
Telamon, they were signally defeated (215 B.C.). The senate 
decided to make the very greatest effort to deliver Italy 
from such dangers. Two consuls crossed the Po, and suc- 
ceeded in conquering the territory of the Insubres. 

The Gauls of the valley of the Po appeared to be com- 
pletely subjected, when Hannibal descended from the Alps 
with a Carthaginian army, which he had led thither from 
Spain., The Boii had guided his march across the Alps. 
After the victories of the Ticinus and the Trebia, the Cisal- 
pine Gauls hastened in great numbers to his camp. They 
followed him in his march toward Rome, and it was with 
Gallic blood that he gained the victories of Lake Trasimenus 
and Cannee. When his marvellous struggle had ended, 
after the battle of Zama, Rome resumed the work of con- 



MIGRATIONS OF THE GAULS. 17 

quest which had been interrupted by his arrival: her 
legions pushed the frontier of the Republic forward to the 
Alps. The Boii abandoned their land and went to seek 
upon the borders of the Danube, in two countries which 
have preserved their name, Bohemia (Boiohemum) and 
Bavaria (Boiaria), a country in which they could live in 
freedom (192 b.c). 

Invasions of Greece.— At an earlier time the Gauls had 
established themselves in the valley of the Danube. Alex- 
ander found them there as he approached that river, and 
gave them the title of allies and friends. Half a century 
later we discover them again, this time in arms and threat- 
ening hostility. About the year 280 b.c, three new tribes 
from Gaul joined them, and the whole body decided to 
invade Macedonia and Thrace. A formidable army forced 
its way into Macedonia. The phalanx was broken through, 
and all the low country fell into the hands of the Gauls. 
They then withdrew to put their plunder in a place of 
security. Macedonia breathed again : but during the win- 
ter the Gauls gathered together new forces, and in the 
spring of 279 b.c, again entered the country of the Mace- 
donians, crushed their last army, and descended into Thes- 
saly in enormous force. All the men of courage that still 
remained to Greece hastened to Thermopylae in order there 
to check the host, and the last ships of Athens took up 
their station in the Maliac gulf to aid in the defence of 
the pass. Vigorously repulsed from Thermopylae, the 
Gauls discovered the path which had opened Greece to 
Xerxes, and Avhich, strangely enough, had not been more 
carefully guarded this time. They immediately marched 
upon Delphi in order to plunder its treasures. Repu.lsed 
from Delphi, which they seem however to have pillaged, 
the Gauls made a retreat which the attacks of the moun- 
taineers rendered higiily disastrous. Hunger and cold 
caused them terrible sufferings. Their general, dangerously 
wounded, killed himself to escape the anger of his soldiers 
or the shame of his defeat (278 b.c). 

The Gauls in the Valley of the Danube; in Asia (Gala- 
tians) . — The fragments of the Gallic army returned to the 
north. Some remained upon the banks of the Danube, 
Avhere they formed the great tribe of the Scordisci : others 
joined their companions who were encamped in Thrace. 
The Gauls of the Danube served frequently as mercenaries 



18 MIGRATIONS OF THE GAULS. 

in the armies of tlie time. They furnished Pyrrhus with 
his best soldiers. 

Tlie Gauls of Thrace had a more brilliant fortune. Two 
princes were then disputing the crown of Bithynia, in Asia 
Minor. One of them took the Gauls into his pay. They 
set him upon the throne : then, finding the country good, 
the inhabitants timid, and the cities rich, they roved about 
over the peninsula for forty years; levying contributions 
from princes and peoples. Driven back finally into the 
centre of the peninsula, they established themselves under 
several chieftains in the country which from them received 
the name of Galatia. When the Eoman legions had van- 
quished Antiochus, king of Syria, at Magnesia, the consul 
Manlius made a successful expedition against the Galatians 
(189 B.C.). 

Contented with having defeated the Galatians, Rome left 
them their liberty, which they retained until 25 b.c. At 
that time, without further warfare, Galatia was reduced to 
the form of a Roman province : but, four centuries later, 
St. Jerome found again, in the district around Ancyra, the 
language which in his youth he had heard spoken upon the 
banks of the Moselle and the Rhine. These restless adven- 
turers, whom one would have supposed so prompt to lose in 
their wanderings the remembrance of their country and so 
ready to adopt the manners of other nations, still piously pre- 
served their ancestral customs and language. So in our days, 
in the midst of English rule, upon the banks of the St. Law- 
rence and in the remote valleys of the Cape of Good Hope, 
is still preserved the tongue which was brought there from 
the banks of the Seine and the Loire by the colonists of 
Henry IV. or of Colbert and the Huguenots of the disper- 
sion. The race so often spoken of as light-headed has 
shown on foreign soil the same persistence as the Bretons 
in their native district. 




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CONQUEST OF GAUL BY THE ROMANS. 19 



CHAPTER III. 

CONQUEST OF GAUL BY THE ROMANS. 
(135-50 B.C.) 

Formation of the Provincia Narbonensis (125). — It was 
years before Eome dared to attack the Gauls. Nevertheless 
it was necessary for her to secure, at any price, an overland 
route from Italy to Spain. The Greeks of Marseilles, long 
the allies of Kome, furnished her an opportunity to do this. 
Attacked by the neighboring tribes, Marseilles had applied 
to the Roman senate, and a Eoman army after having con- 
quered the Ligurians gave their lands to the Massilians 
(154). In the year 125, fresh complaints led the legions to 
march a second time against the Salyes, who were defeated. 
This time Rome kept what she had conquered ; she thus 
had a new province between the Rhone and the Alps, with 
its capital at Aix (Aquse Sextiee, 122). The ^dui, be- 
tween the Sa6ne and the Loire, at once asked to be admitted 
into alliance with Rome. The Allobroges, on the contrary, 
attacked her, but were defeated (121). The following year 
the Romans also defeated the king of the Arverni. All 
the country on both sides of the Rhone up to the Lake 
of Geneva was united to the province, which, in the folloAv- 
ing year; was extended to the Pyrenees. The Volcse Tecto- 
sages, dwelling around Toulouse, accepted the title of fede- 
rati; and the colony of Karbo Martins (Narbonne) was 
founded, to watch over the new subjects (118). 

The Cimbri and Teutones (110) ; Battle of Aix (102).— 
The invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones came near sweep- 
ing away this recently established domination. Three hun- 
dred thousand of these barbarians crossed the Rhine, spre^ad 
over Gaul, and, on the borders of the Rhone, crushed succes- 
sively three Roman armies. But, instead of crossing the 
Alps, they passed over the Pyrenees and wasted their time 
and their strength in fighting against the warlike Celtibe- 
rians. This was the salvation of Rome. She had time to 
send Marius to guard her province in Gaul, That skilful 



20 CONQUEST OF GAUL BY THE ROMANS. 

general placed liis camp on tlie left bank of the Rhone, and 
labored to restore discipline in the army. 

It was near Aix that the horde encountered him. He was 
camped on a hill where the supply of water was insufficient. 
In crossing a river which lay in front of them, the barba- 
rians broke their lines and had not had time to reform them, 
when the Homans came down upon them from their ele- 
vated position with such overwhelming force that they were 
obliged, after a bloody struggle, to take to flight. The Eo- 
mans, after this first victory, regained their position at night- 
fall, but passed the whole night in watching and apprehen- 
sion, expecting a nocturnal attack. But the Teutones did 
not come out of their camp either that night or the next 
day ; they employed their time in preparing for battle. This 
second battle, which took place two days after the first, was 
not more successful for the barbarians ; attacked in front 
by the legions, surprised in the rear by a lieutenant of 
Marius, they could not resist. The massacre was horrible, 
as in all the battles of the ancients, in which men fought 
hand to hand. 

The Suevi and the Helvetii ; Caesar in Gaul (58) . — The 
civil wars prevented Home from following up this victory. 
Meanwhile the Suevi set out upon the path which the Cim- 
bri had undertaken to follow ; 120,000 of them entered 
the valley of the Sa6ne under Ariovistus. The -^dui and 
the Sequani (in Burgundy and Franche-Comte) implored the 
protection of Borne against them. At the same time the 
Helvetii in Switzerland, incessantly harassed by the Ger- 
mans, proposed to abandon the country, cross Gaul, and 
settle on the shore of the Ocean. Julius Caesar, who was 
consul at the time, wishing, for political purposes, to acquire 
military resources and prestige, had himself appointed gov- 
ernor of Illyricum and the two Gauls (Cisalpine and Trans- 
alpine), with orders to repress the Helvetii and drive away 
the Suevi. 

First Campaign (68) ; Submission of the Valley of the Saone. 
— Caesar began with the Helvetii; he repulsed them in a 
great battle on the borders of the Sa6ne, and forced them 
to return to their country. This first expedition finished, 
he marched against Ariovistus and by a bloody battle put 
the barbarians to flight. Ariovistus recrossed the river with 
a few of his men ; the rest of the Suevi returned to their 
forests. Two formidable wars had been terminated in a 
single campaign (58). 



CONQUEST OF GAUL BY THE ROMANS. 21 

Second and Third Campaigns ; Conquest of Gallia Belgica 
(57), of Armorica and Aquitania (56). — The Belgse, disturbed 
at seeing the legions so near them, took up arms, and in the 
spring Csesar encountered on the banks of the Aisne 300,000 
barbarians renowned as the bravest in all Gaul. A skilful 
diversion caused certain tribes to withdraw, and a cavalry 
charge turned this retreat into a disorderly flight. The 
coalition dissolved, it was necessary to conquer, one after 
the other, all these tribes. The Suessiones, the Bellovaci, 
and the Ambiani (Soissons, Beauvais, and Amiens) made no 
resistance; but the Nervii (Hainault) awaited the legions 
behind the Sambre and came near exterminating them. 
Finally the whole Nervian army was destroyed. This des- 
perate battle placed Gallia Belgica at Caesar's feet. 

The next year Csesar himself attacked the Veneti (Mor- 
bihan), defeated them in a naval battle, and reduced them 
to subjection. At the same time Sabinus in the north had 
dispersed the army of the Aulerci (Le Mans), the Eburovices 
(£vreux), the Unelli (St. L6), and the Lexovii (Lisieux). 
In the south, Crassus had penetrated without hindrance as 
far as the Garonne, and received the submission of almost 
all Aquitania. The conquest of Gaul seemed complete 
(56). 

Fourth and Fifth Campaigns; Expeditions beyond the 
Rhine and into Britain (55-54). — An invasion by the Usip- 
etes and the Tencteri, with difficulty repulsed, and the 
assistance which, the preceding year, the Armoricans had 
received from the island of Britain, showed Caesar that 
he would be obliged to isolate Gaul from Britain and Ger- 
many. He then crossed the Rhine, terrified the neighboring 
tribes, and returned to strike a sudden blow at Britain. 
The disembarkation was difficult ; but the Eomans landed 
after a battle in the midst of the waves. The tide and a 
violent wind dispersed a squadron which was bringing 
Caesar's cavalry to him, and shattered his ships of burden. 
He hastened to give battle to the islanders in order to be 
able to return quickly but with honor to the continent. 
He reappeared in Britain the following year. This time he 
forced the Britains to give him hostages and to promise 
an annual tribute. 

Ambiorix. — The war with the Gauls was supposed to be 
finished ; in reality it had scarcely begun. Until then the 
tribes had fought separately ; united movements were now 



22 CONQUEST OF GAUL BY THE ROMANS. 

to follow. In order to keep tliem in subjection Caesar had 
favored the elevation of certain ambitions persons in some 
tribes, or formed a Konian party in others. The deceptive 
calm and apparent resignation of the chiefs of the Gauls 
inspired him with a sense of complete security, and a famine 
rendering provisions scarce, he scattered his eight legions 
over a wide territory. But a vast conspiracy existed, of 
which Ambiorix, a chief of the Eburones, and Indutiomarus, 
a Treveran, were the leading spirits. . It was their intention 
to take up arms, call the Germans, and attack the legions 
in their quarters, cutting off entirely all communications 
between them. The secret was well kept. Ambiorix, on 
his part, making a sudden attack, massacred a whole legion 
and attacked the camp of Quintus Cicero. On the north 
and east of the Loire the movement became general. 

In spite of his vigilance it was some time before Csesar 
learned of Cicero's danger. He had at command only 7000 
men, and the assailants numbered at least 60,000 ; never- 
theless he attacked them, and delivered Cicero's camp. 
Labienus was equally successful against the Treveri; he 
killed Indutiomarus. Ambiorix esca^^ed, but the Eburones 
were exterminated. 

Sixth Campaign ; General Revolt ; Vercingetorix (52) . — 
During the winter a new insurrection was prepared; the 
signal for it came from the country of the Carnutes 
(Chartres). All the Romans established at Genabum (Gien) 
were massacred ; the same day the news of it was transmitted 
to Gergovia (near Clermont), about 150 miles distant. There 
was living there a young and noble Arvernian, Vercinget- 
orix. As soon as he heard of the massacre of Genabum, he 
aroused the people, had himself invested with military 
command, and caused the meeting of a supreme council of 
the tribes of Gaul. Erom the Garonne to the Seine, all the 
tribes responded to his appeal and bestowed on him the 
conduct of the war. He pushed forward his prej)arations 
with energy, and gave the league an organization, which in 
all the previous attempts of the Gauls had not been achieved. 
His plan of attack was skilful : one of his lieutenants was 
to march southward and invade Gallia Narbonensis, while 
he himself was to march to the north against the legions ; 
but a slight delay gave Caesar time to return from Italy. 
In a few days the proconsul organized the defence of the 
province, drove off the enemy, crossed the Cevennes in spite 



CONQUEST OF GAUL BY THE ROMANS. 23 

of six feet of snow, and desolated the whole Arvernian 
territory. Then, recrossing the mountains, he went along 
the Khone and SaOne by forced marches, and joined the 
main body of his legions. His courage and his tremendous 
activity had baf&ed the double project of the Gallic general. 

Caesar recaptured Genabum, crossed the Loire, and began 
taking the towns of the Bituriges. Vercingetorix saw that 
with such an adversary it would be necessary to fight another 
war. The Bituriges and other tribes heroically burned their 
villages in order to starve the enemy, but their intention 
was not fully carried out; Avaricum (Bourges), the capital 
of the country, was spared ; Ceesar went there at once. In 
twenty -five days he had constructed his towers for attack, 
and an earthwork 300 feet long and 80 feet high. The town 
was taken. The provisions which he found in it fed his army 
during the last three months of winter ; when spring came, 
he detached Labienus with four legions against the Senones 
(Sens) and the Parisii (Paris), while he himself conducted 
the rest of the army against the Arverni ( Auvergne) . But 
Vercingetorix covered Gergovia (near Clermont); he re- 
pelled an attack in which forty-six centurions perished, and 
Caesar retreated, to rejoin Labienus, and boldly marched 
northward, leaving 100,000 Gauls between him and Gallia 
Narbonensis. 

The league of the north had taken as its chief Camulo- 
geniis, an old warrior, skilful and energetic, who had taken 
up his headquarters at Lutetia (Paris). Attacked by Labi- 
enus, Camulogenus burned the city and the bridges, and 
retired to the heights on the left bank. Labienus crossed 
the Seine, and defeated him in a bloody action. Camulo- 
genus perished with almost all his warriors, and Labienus 
joined his general. Ceesar encountered Vercingetorix not 
far from the Sadne. The Gallic cavalrymen had sworn 
that they would never see their wives and children again 
till they had crossed the Eoman lines at least twice. Caesar 
incurred the greatest dangers, but his legions bravely with-* 
stood that furious charge, and, in their turn, pursued the 
enemy, who fled in disorder to the very walls of Alesia. 

Siege of Alesia (52). — Alesia, situated on the top of a 
steep hill, was considered one of the strongest positions in 
Gaul. In front of her walls, on the sides of the hill, Ver- 
cingetorix laid out a camp for his army, which niimbered 
about 80,000 foot-soldiers and 10,000 cavalry. Caesar con- 



24 CONQUEST OF GAUL BY THE ROMANS. 

ceived the bold design of ending tlie war with one blow by 
besieging at once both the city and the army. Works were 
begnn. Lines of circumvallation ten miles long and of 
elaborate construction were drawn around the town and the 
hostile camp. All these works were repeated on the side 
next the open country, where the contravallation had a cir- 
cuit of sixteen miles. Five weeks and less than 60,000 men 
sufficed for this undertaking. Vercingetorix, sending away 
his cavalry, promised to hold out thirty days, and called on 
the Gallic tribes to rise in a body. His appeal was responded 
to ; 248,000 tried warriors assembled from all parts of Gaul 
to deliver their brethren : they dashed themselves against 
the impregnable ramparts of the legions. After having 
sustained several assaults, Caesar led the attack himself, 
repulsed the Gauls, cut their rear guard in pieces, spread 
panic through their ranks, and scattered them. This time 
Gaul was thoroughly and forever conquered. 

The garrison of Alesia had no alternative but to accept 
such terms of capitulation as it pleased the conqueror to 
grant. Vercingetorix came in and surrendered himself. 
Six years later, after having graced Caesar's triumph, he 
was put to death. 

Seventh Campaign (51) ; Pacification of Gaul (50). — Some 
movements on the north and east were still to be suppressed. 
Caesar chastised the communities of the Bituriges (Bourges), 
the Carnutes (Chartres), and the Bellovaci (Beauvais) ; all 
the tribes of the northeast renewed their promises of obe- 
dience. He overran Gallia Belgica, exacted hostages of the 
Armorican communities, and stifled all insurrection between 
the Loire and the Garonne. There was soon no longer any 
war except among the Cadurci (Cahors) at Uxellodunum. 
Caesar reduced that city, and caused the hands of all those 
whom he found in it to be cut off. 

This odious deed was the last act in the terrible struggle 
which decided that the Gauls should not remain free to 
follow the natural development of their national genius. 
Their native civilization was further advanced than the 
usual accounts would indicate ; and, if it is not possible to 
say what this civilization, left to its own inspirations, would 
have become, we may feel justified in honoring a heroic 
resistance and pitying the premature end of a great, brave 
people. 

For Eome the Gallic war ended gloriously the list of the 



CONQUEST OF GAUL BY THE ROMANS. 25 

conquests of the Republic. Caesar liad employed in tliem 
eight years, ten legions, and the inexhaustible resources of 
Eoman discipline, of his own military genius and incom- 
parable energy. G-aul was reduced to a province, but the 
cities retained their laws and their governments ; the only 
sign of the conquest was a tribute of forty million sesterces 
(11,600,000). 



SECOND PERIOD. 

G-AUL UNDER THE ROMANS (50 B.C. - 476 A.D.). 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE GAULS UNDER THE EMPIRE. 
(50 B.C. — 395 A.D.) 

Organization of Gaul by Augustus. — The civil war and liis 
premature death prevented Caesar from paying much atten- 
tion to Gaul. Augustus, even, could not think of doing so, 
until after he had become sole master of the Roman world. 
Visiting Gaul in 27 e.g., he changed the boundaries of the 
provinces and the names of several cities. Aquitania was 
extended to the Loire. Gallia Celtica, or Lugdunensis, was 
limited to the countries comprised between the Loire, the 
Seine, and the Marne. The rest formed Gallia Belgica. 

Numerous Roman colonies were established in Gaul. 
Fr^jus became one of the great arsenals of the Empire, and 
Aries was greatly enlarged. The capitals of the Suessiones 
(Soissons), the Veromandui (St. Quentin), the Tricasses 
(Troyes), the Ausci (Auch), and the Treveri (Trier) took the 
name of Augusta. The city of the Turones became Caesaro- 
dunum (Tours) ; that of the Lemovices was called Augus- 
toritum (Limoges), and Bibracte, Augustodunum (Autun). 

Privileges were unequally distributed; the ^dui, the 
Remi, and the Carnutes retained the title of allies ; the 
Santones, the Arverni, the Bituriges, and the Suessiones, 
their laws, Finally, Gaul was divided into sixty munici- 
palities ; that is, the number of recognized Gallic tribes was 
reduced to that figure. Each of these sixty cities became 
responsible for disturbances which broke out within its 
territory. Lugdunum (Lyons) was made the centre of the 



THE GAULS UNDER THE EMPIRE. 27 

imperial administration in Gaul. Four great military high- 
ways extended thence to the Ocean, to the Rhine, to the 
Channel and along the Rhone and the Mediterranean coast 
to the Pyrenees. Augustus forbade human sacrifices and 
promised municipal rights to those alone who should aban- 
don the druidica,l worship. The province quickly became 
Roman. 

Reorganization in the Fourth Century. — This first organ- 
ization was modified in the fourth century. A prefecture 
of the Gauls was then formed, the seat of which was at 
Trier, and which comprised the three dioceses of Spain, 
Britain, and Gaul, the last divided into seventeen provinces, 
which were subdivided into 120 municipalities. The praeto- 
rian prefect, the vicar of the diocese, the seventeen presidents 
or governors of provinces, exercised only civil authority; 
military authority was vested in the comites and duces. 

Each city ruled over the minor towns of its territory. In 
each, a hereditary senate and municipal officers managed the 
affairs of the city and its territory, under the direction of 
the governor of the province. This governor revised, upon 
appeal, the sentences rendered by the municipal senates, 
and he received the taxes, the assessment and collection of 
which were made by the municipal council itself. In 365 
Valentinian instituted a defender of the city, charged with 
defending its interests against the imperial officers and 
against oppressions of every kind. This office was almost 
immediately and nearly everywhere bestowed upon the bish- 
ops, and became the basis of their power in the cities. 

Roman Civilization in Gaul. — The Gauls carried into 
peaceful employments the energy which they had shown 
during times of war. The druidical forests were hewn down, 
or were cut through by roads. Cities were multiplied; 
Greek art planted itself among them. Triumphal arches, 
temples, circuses, theatres, and aqueducts were constructed, 
and not always by the hands of foreign artists. Orange still 
preserves a triumphal arch, the most beautiful one which 
the Romans have left in France ; Vienne, the temple of 
Augustus and Livia; Nimes, one of the best preserved of 
the Roman amphitheatres, the Maison-Carree, and also, at a 
short distance from the town, the Pont du Gard. This 
colossal construction, which crosses the valley of the Gardon 
at an elevation of forty-eight meters, was only a part of the 
immense aqueducts of- that city. At the same period the 



28 THE GAULS UNDER THE EMPIRE. 

schools of Bordeaux, Autun, Lyons, and Vienne rivalled 
those of Greece, and conquered Gaul sent to the masters of 
the world grammarians, orators, and poets ; Valerius Cato, 
called the Latin Siren, Cornelius Gallus, the elegiac poet, 
and friend of Virgil and Augustus ; Trogus Pompeius, the 
first Latin author of a universal history ; Domitius Afer, 
the master of Quintilian and Petronius ; Pavorinus, a cele- 
brated sophist, a friend of Plutarch and the emperor Hadrian, 
was himself astonished that, being a Gaul, he should be able 
to speak Greek so fluently. Later, there flourished, in the 
fourth century, the amiable poet Ausonius ; in the fifth, 
Sidonius Apollinaris, poet and bishop. 

Commerce and industry were developed even more rapidly 
than the arts and letters. In the time of Augustus the 
most flourishing cities were found only at the points where 
Gaul touched Italy ; as early as the second century, industry 
had spread through the whole country and brought wealth 
with it. Toulouse eclipsed ISTarbonne ; Nlmes surpassed the 
ancient Phocaean city of Marseilles. Lyons, the ancient 
metropolis, feared a rival in the city of the Treveri (Trier). 
Mainz, Cologne, twenty other cities bordering on the 
Ehine; Vienne, Autun, and Eheims, with their schools; 
Lutetia (Paris), which became the residence of the Caesars ; 
Langres and Saintes, with their manufacture of woollen 
cloaks ; Bordeaux, the principal port for Spain and Britain, 
show life sx^reading in every quarter. 

Not only did the language, laws, and arts of Eome take 
possession of Gaul, but also the Soman life. Yet the Gallic 
nationality was not completely stifled under this foreign 
civilization. The old Celtic idiom existed, particularly in 
the west and in the nortlr. Many of the customs, also, were 
retained. Druidism itself, though persecuted by the em- 
perors, had not entirely disappeared. 

Christianity in Gaul. — As early as the second century 
there were Christians beyond the Alps. Lyons had the first 
Gallic church and the first martyrs. Towards the middle 
of the century there had arrived in that city some priests of 
the church of Smyrna, having as their head the bishop 
Pothinus, a disciple of Saint Pol3-carp, who himself, in his 
youth, had heard the apostle John. Pothinus, in a few 
years, won over a large number to the faith. One day the 
populace of Lyons rose against the Christians. Conducted 
before the governor, the faithful were condemned to torture. 



THE GAULS UNDER THE EMPIRE. 29 

The greater part of them faced martyrdom. Pothinus died 
in prison at tlie age of ninety. Forty-seven other confessors 
perished, being either devoured by lions, or put to the 
sword (177). 

The church of Lyons, scattered for the moment, was again 
reunited by St. Irenseus. The Gospel of Christ had not 
yet been carried into the rest of Gaul. About the year 250 
seven bishops set out from Eome to accomplish its conver- 
sion. Paul, Trophimus, and Saturninus established them- 
selves at Narbonne, Aries, and Toulouse ; Martial and Ga^ 
tian went to Limoges and Tours ; Stremonius, to the country 
of the Arverni ; and Dionysius (St. Denis), to Lutetia. But 
persecution put a stop to their pious undertakings. Diony- 
sius was beheaded. 

The disciples whom they left behind them had the same 
zeal, and endured the same sufferings ; but dangers doubled 
their fervor and devotion ; noble men were seen to seek the 
humblest occupations in order to gain free access to all 
classes of the people, and be able to aid vigorously the 
spread of the Gospel. A century later St. Martin took up 
and completed, in the regions of the north and west, the 
work of St. Denis. 

But Christianity was already seated, with Constantine, on 
the imperial throne. In this great revolution, Gaul could 
claim a glorious part, and it was through the support of the 
churches of Gaul and Africa that Christianity maintained 
its unity against the-Oriental heresies. The temporal power 
of the clergy had followed the progress of its moral power ; 
and in the decline of the Empire the cities bestowed upon 
their bishops, with the title of defensor civitatis, the princi- 
pal authority in the city. 

Political Events; Civilis. — In the reign of Tiberius two 
revolts were easily suppressed. Claudius, so severe toward 
the Druids, offered to the Gauls the entrance to the senate. 
The movement which overthrew Nero came from the borders 
of the Sa6ne ; the Aquitanian Vindex, governor of Gallia 
Lugdunensis, gave the signal for it. The Empire was vio- 
lently shaken ; in two years (68-70) four emperors wore the 
purple. Civilis, a Batavian, conceived that the time had 
come to break the bonds which Csesar had forced upon the 
land. The Druids announced the fall of the Latin race and 
the advent of the Transalpine nations. Sabinus, a Gaul, 
assumed the title of emperor. But Vespasian was already 



30 THE GAULS UNDER THE EMPIRE. 

in Eome ; everything was reorganized under his powerful 
hand ; the legions returned to their duty, and Civilis fled to 
the marshes of Batavia, whence he asked for peace. Sabinus 
hid his ephemeral royalty in a subterranean dwelling, where 
he lived nine years with his wife Eponina. Being at last 
discovered and conducted to Rome, he was put to death, and 
Eponina with him. 

The Third and Fourth Centuries. — In the third century 
the continual revolutions to which the Roman world was a 
prey emboldened the barbarians. Powerful confederations 
were formed in Germany, which incessantly assailed the 
left bank of the Rhine. In the universal disorder a suc- 
cession of Gallic Caesars arose. As soon as the barbarians 
learned of the death of Aurelian, they dashed into Gaul and 
sacked seventy cities. Probus came up and drove the Ger- 
mans back into their forests. The prosperity which the 
provinces had enjoyed for two centuries disappeared beneath 
the sufferings arising from these frequent incursions and 
the fiscal oppression of the Roman administration. Poverty 
increased throughout the country ; in the time of Diocletian, 
the peasants arose under the name of Bagaudas. Maximian 
found it necessary to make regular war upon them, and 
destroyed their entrenched camp near Paris. 

Ravages of the Barbarians ; Julian in Gaul. — Constantius 
Chlorus ruled Gaul mildly and sought to heal her wounds. 
His son, Constantine (306), taught the barbarians some 
severe lessons, the remembrance of which kept them quiet 
during his entire reign. Under Constantius they reap- 
peared, and in order to save Gallia Belgica from the Franks 
and Alemanni, this j^rince was obliged to send Julian 
thither (355). The young Caesar delivered Gaul from them 
by a battle near Strassburg in 357. Yet Julian allowed the 
Salian Pranks to establish themselves on the lower Meuse. 
He took great pleasure in dwelling at Lutetia, and there he 
was proclaimed emperor by his soldiers (360). Soon after 
his reign the Empire was divided into the Eastern and West- 
ern Empires. 

Gaul falls to the Share of Honorius (395). — Valentinian, 
who reigned over the West (364), and his son Gratian (375), 
held the barbarians in subjection. But they entered the 
legions first as paid auxiliaries, then obtained offices and 
honors ; for in the midst of these degenerate Romans they 
alone retained courage, boldness, and energy. The Prank 



THE GAULS UNDER THE EMPIRE. 31 

Arbogast killed Valentinian II. and made Eugenius, the 
rhetorician, emperor (392). Theodosius overthrew them, 
and for some time reigned over all the provinces; but at 
his death the Empire was again divided, and Gaul fell to 
the lot of Honorius (395). 



32 INVASION OF THE BARBARIANS. 



CHAPTER V. 

INVASION OF THE BARBARIANS. — THE FRANKS BEFORE 

CLOVIS. 

(341-481 A.DO 

Decline of the Empire. — The Koman Empire had existed 
four centuries, — two with honor and prosperity, two in 
misery and shame. At the end of tlie fourth century there 
was no longer courage among the soldiers nor patriotism 
among the citizens, who were ruined by the increasing 
exactions of a government each day becoming more incar 
pable of protecting its subjects. And finally, Christianity 
itself was one cause of the dissolution of the Empire. The 
Gauls did not know how to defend themselves ; they did 
not even know how to act in concert. As soon as the incon- 
siderable line of soldiers on the borders of the Rhine was 
broken through, the barbarians overran the country with 
impunity. When Italy recalled to her aid the remnant of 
the legions, and the borders of the Rhine were no longer 
guarded, the barbarians crossed the river triumphantly. 

Origin of the Franks. — The Germans who inhabited the 
country on the right side of the Rhine were still in that 
primitive state of civilization in which the nations are 
divided into tribes almost independent of each other; in 
which the family forms a society by itself ; in which the 
individual, bound by no special law, can give vent freely to 
all his passions. At this stage of civilization the nations, 
unskilled in agricultural or industrial pursuits, do not accu- 
miilate, and war is their principal occupation ; poverty pro- 
tects them from certain vices, war cultivates in them some 
virtues. The Germans of Tacitus had the good qualities 
and the defects of all barbarians. 

From about the middle of the third century of our era 
the Germans on the right bank of the Rhine had formed two 
confederations : to the south, that of the Suevic tribes, who 
were called the Alemanni (all men) ; in the north, that of the 
Salians, the Sicambri, the Bructeri, the Cherusci, the Chatti, 



THE FRANKS BEFORE CL0VI8. 33 

etc., who took the name of Franks (the brave). The first 
mention made of the latter, in the Roman writings, is in the 
year 241, when Aurelian defeated a body of Franks. 

In the year 286 a body of Franks traversed the whole of 
Gaul, crossed the Pyrenees, ravaged Spain, and perished 
in Africa. Probus transported a colony of Franks to the 
Black Sea (277). But soon wearying of this exile, they 
seized upon some vessels, passed through the straits, crossed 
the Mediterranean, and, pillaging by turns the coasts of 
Asia, Greece, and Africa as far as the Pillars of Hercules, 
circumnavigating Spain and Gaul, returned and informed 
their fellow-countrymen on the banks of the Ehine of the 
weakness of the great Empire. 

The Franks within the Empire. — As soon as Eome 
relaxed her vigilance, they crossed the Rhine (368) and 
devastated Gallia Belgica. Julian found they had so com- 
pletely ruined the valley of the Meuse that it was best to 
leave it to them to repopulate. Consequently the Franks 
were the first to cross the Rhine, the first to establish them- 
selves in Gaul as auxiliaries and allies of the Empire ; they 
were the last to found a state there. Not only did the 
Franks establish themselves peaceably in the Empire ; but a 
few of them rose to the highest offices. The career of the 
Frank Arbogast and of his emperor, Eugenius, has already 
been described. 

The Great Invasion of 406; Kingdoms of the Burgun- 
dians (413) and the Visigoths (419). — Towards the end of 
the year 406, while the legions were occupied in Italy, the 
Suevi, the Alans, and the Vandals advanced towards the 
Rhine. The Franks established on the left bank endeavored 
to stop their progress, but were defeated, and the horde 
crossed the river. After immense ravages, the tide of 
destruction passed beyond the Pyrenees and inundated 
Spain. The Burgundians remained in Eastern Gaul, and 
Honorius granted them all the land extending from Lake 
Geneva to the confiuence of the Rhine and the Moselle (413). 

About the same time the Visigoths, whom Alaric had led 
from the banks of the Danube into Italy, were conducted 
by his brother-in-law Ataulf into Southern Gaul. This bar- 
barian became ?i. Roman with all his heart, endeavored to 
repair the ruin wrought by his people, and began, in the 
name of the Empire, the conquest of Spain from the Suevi 
and the Alans. His successor, Wallia, continued the war 



34 INVASION OF THE BARBARIANS. 

on his own account. The Visigoths, masters of Aquitania 
as far as the Loire, and of the greater part of Spain, had 
thus acquired a powerful empire of which Toulouse was the 
capital (419). 

The Salian Franks under Clodion and Meroveus; Battle 
of the Catalaunian Plains (451). — A few years later the 
Franks advanced into the interior of the country. About 
428 the Salian Franks were commanded by King Clodion, 
who resided in what is now Limburg. Clodion took Tournai 
and Cambrai, put to death all the Romans whom he found 
in them, and advancing upon the Somme arrived near Hes- 
din (431), but was there surprised and defeated by the 
Koman general Aetius, then the most formidable defender 
of the Empire. Meroveus, a relative of Clodion, succeeded 
him as chief of the Salians ; three years after (461) the 
Franks united with all the barbarians colonized in Gaul and 
with the remnant of the Romans to arrest the formidable 
invasion of the Huns. 

These Huns, who had come three-quarters of a century 
before from the depths of Asia, were a source of terror to 
all. They had nothing in common with the tribes of the 
West, either in personal characteristics or in habits of life. 
They wandered through the immense steppes in enormous 
chariots or on small, untiring horses. Their food was the 
milk of their mares or a little meat. Casting themselves 
upon Europe in the second half of the fourth century, they 
unsettled the whole barbarian world and precipitated it 
upon the Roman Empire. The Goths were fleeing before 
them, when they crossed the Danube ; the Vandals and the 
Burgundians, when they crossed the Rhine. After a halt 
of half a century in the centre of Europe, the Huns were 
now again in motion. 

Attila, their king, constrained all the wandering tribes 
from the Rhine to the Ural to join him, crossed the Rhine, 
the Moselle, and the Seine, and marched upon Orleans. 
The populace fled in unutterable fright before the Scourge 
of God. Metz and twenty other cities had been destroyed. 
The immense army surrounded Orleans, the key of the 
southern provinces, but Aetius arrived with all the bar- 
barian nations settled in Gaul. Attila retreated in order 
to choose a field of battle suitable for his cavalry ; he halted 
in the Catalaunian plains, near M6ry-sur-Seine. There a 
fearful encounter took place. On the day of the chief fight, 



THE FRANKS BEFORE CLOVIS. 35 

165,000 combatants strewed the bloody field. Attila was 
defeated, but the allies allowed him to re-enter Germany 
(451). After an invasion of upper Italy in the next year, 
he died, and his kingdom perished with him. The Visigoths, 
whose king had fallen, and the Franks of Meroveus, had 
shared with Aetius the chief honor of that memorable day 
on the Catalaunian plains. 

The Salian Franks under Childeric (456-481). — Meroveus 
was succeeded, in 456, by his son Childeric. The Franks, 
whom he irritated by his luxurious habits, drove him away, 
and put in his place the Roman general, ^gidius. Childeric 
took refuge in Thuringia, but at the end of eight years re- 
turned and was re-established in his power. Basina, queen 
of Thuringia, followed him. Childeric married her, and 
had by her one son who was called Clovis. Childeric died 
in 481, and was buried at Tournai. 

Chaos in Gaul. — After the battle of M6ry and the great 
league formed for the moment against Attila, all was again 
confusion for thirty years. The Western Empire had come 
to an end in 476, when Odoacer, a Herulian chief, deposed 
the last emperor, E,omulus Augustulus, and established the 
first barbarian kingdom in Italy. In Gaul this was not per- 
ceived ; for iEgidius, a Roman general, retained control of 
the countries between the Loire and the Somme, which had 
not as yet been occupied by any barbarous tribe, and be- 
queathed them to his son Syagrius. The cities of Armorica 
had long had an independent government. The Franks 
entered Gallia Belgica in still greater numbers. The Britons, 
attacked in their island by Saxon pirates, came, in their 
turn, to pillage Angers, near the Loire (470). One of the 
last emperors had ceded to the Visigoths all the southern 
part of Gaul west of the Rhone ; they also seized upon 
Aries, Marseilles, and Aix on the east side of the river 
(480). Some Britons penetrated into Berry, some Franks 
as far as Narbonne, which they sacked. There was a per- 
petual coming and going. The tribes came into collision, 
and mingled together from north to south, from east to 
west ; all were seeking their fortunes, sword in hand. The 
peaceful Gallo-Roman cities reorganized their militia, and 
profited by the universal confusion to decide long-standing 
quarrels. In the midst of this chaos, the deep voice of the 
Church alone s^Doke of peace and order to those furious crea- 
tures, and she alone stretched out her hand to protect the 
weak. 



THIRD PERIOD. 

Meeovingian Fkance (481-687). 
CHAPTER VI. 

CLOVIS. 
(481-611 A.D.) 

Gaul in 481 . — At the accession of Clovis there were 
many states in Gaul : 1. Between the Loire and the Pyrenees, 
the Visigoths, masters of more than three-quarters of Spain, 
and, beyond the Ehone, of all the covmtries between the 
Durance and the sea ; 2. in the valley of the Sa6ne and of 
the Rhone down to the Durance, the Burgundians ; 3. be- 
tween the mouth of the Loire and that of the Seine, the 
Armorican free cities ; 4. between the Mayenne, the middle 
Loire, and the Somme, Syagrius ruled over the remnant of 
the Empire ; 5. between the Vosges and the Rhine, a body 
of Alemanni had settled; 6. a colony which had come 
over from Britain during the previous century had settled 
in Armorica ; 7. all Gallia Belgica was in the power of the 
Franks. Their principal chiefs resided at Cologne, Tournai, 
Cambrai, and Th^rouanne. The state of Syagrius was only 
a mass of ruins, neither sufficiently Roman nor sufficiently 
barbarian to have any chance of permanency. The Armo- 
ricans aspired only to maintain their existence apart from 
the rest. 

The Burg^undians and the Visigoths. — The Burgundians 
were still barbarians, but they had for a long time enjoyed 
a near view of Roman society. When the invasion cast 
them into Gaul, they took, without violence, two-thirds of 
the land and one-third of the slaves, but manifested towards 
the Gallo-Romans, who remained in their midst, neither 



CLoris. 37 

scornful indifference nor outspoken insolence. Their na- 
tional law was borrowed in great part from the laws of tlie 
Romans, and possessed characteristics of refinement unusual 
among these adventurers of the fifth century. Unfortu- 
nately for their power, it was by Arian missionaries that 
they had been converted. 

The Visigoths were no longer terrible. They had been 
cantoned in the Empire for a century and in the heart of the 
richest provinces. Consequently the court of the Visigothic 
kings at Toulouse was already full of elegance and refine- 
ment, in spite of the presence of numerous barbarians who 
came to solicit the protection of the powerful king who 
ruled over three-quarters of Spain and a third of Gaul. 

If at that time the question had arisen, which tribe would 
eventually possess Gaul, the unhesitating answer would 
have been, the Visigoths. But that tribe had lost its savage 
energy. Moreover, like the Burgundians, it was Arian ; that 
is, it possessed a religious faith opposed to that of the Gallo- 
Romans. Already the antipathy between the orthodox sub- 
jects and the heretic masters was causing some friction. 

The Franks ; Manners and Religion. — "The Franks," says 
Augustin Thierry, " wore their red blond hair rolled u] 
in a sort of tufted knot on the top of the head, allowin.; 
the ends to hang down behind like a horse's tail. Their 
faces were smoothly shaven, with the exception of two 
long moustaches. They wore linen coats girded round the 
waist by a broad belt from which hung a sword. Their 
favorite weapon was an axe having one or two edges. They 
began a fight by throwing it from a distance. They also car- 
ried pikes of medium length having long and strong points 
armed with several barbs or hooks, sharp and bent like fish- 
hooks. When this pike had transfixed a shield, the hooks 
with which it was furnished rendering its extraction impos- 
sible, it remained suspended and dragged its other end upon 
the ground. Then the Prank who had thrown it leaped for- 
ward, and placing his foot upon the javelin, leaned upon it 
with all his weight, so that the adversary, being obliged to 
lower his arm, exposed his head and breast. Sometimes 
the pike, with a cord attached to the end, served as a sort 
of harpoon to drag in whatever it reached." 

The religion of the Franks was the coarse and warlike 
worship of Odin, the god of the Scandinavians. They 
believed that after death the brave ascended to Walhalla, 



38 CLOVIS. 

a palace reared in the clouds, where pleasure consisted of 
perpetual combats interrupted by long feastings, when beer 
and mead were circulated without intermission in the skulls 
of the enemies whom the heroes had killed. "Thus the 
Franks loved war passionately, as a means of becoming rich 
in this world, and in another the guests of the gods. The 
youngest and most violent of them sometimes experienced 
in battle those paroxysms of frantic ecstasy which were 
afterward exhibited by the Northmen." 

Political Institutions of the Franks. — The institutions of 
the Franks were the same as those of all the Germanic tribes. 
Each tribe had a chief, whom the Romans called king. These 
kings, among the greater part of the Germanic nations, were 
chosen exclusively from a family invested with a sort of 
religious consecration. Among the Franks, the family was 
that of Meroveus. But allegiance to these kings was lightly 
held. 

Public Assemblies. — " Among the Germans," says Tacitus, 
" small affairs are submitted to the deliberation of the 
chiefs ; large ones, to that of the whole tribe. Those very 
affairs, however, which are reserved for the decision of the 
tribe are first discussed by the chiefs. They assemble, 
except in case of some sudden and unforeseen event, upon 
appointed days, at the time of the new or full moon. An 
abuse grows out of their independence ; namely, that, instead 
of assembling all at once, as if they were obeying an order, 
they lose two or three days in gathering together. When 
the assembly appears to be sufficiently numerous, they hold 
a meeting, all armed. The priests, to whom is entrusted 
the power of preventing disorder, command silence. Then 
the king, or the chief most distinguished on account of his 
age, his noble rank, his exploits, or his eloquence, speaks, 
and gains a hearing by the power of persuasion rather than 
by the authority of command. If the advice is displeasing, 
they reject it by murmurs; if it is approved, they shake 
their spears : this suffrage of arms is the most honorable 
sign of their assent." 

The Salians; Victory of Soissons (486). — In 481, Clovis 
possessed only a few districts of Gallia-Belgic'a, with the 
title of king of the Salian Franks of Tournai. His army did 
not exceed four or five thousand warriors. In 486, at twenty 
years of age, he proposed to his Franks to make a warlike 
expedition, induced Kagnachar, king of Cambrai, to join 



CLOVIS. 39 

him ; and the two, at the head of five thousand warriors, 
defeated, near Soissons, Syagrius, who fled to the Visigoths : 
he was afterwards given up to Clovis and put to death. Here 
occurred the famous incident of the vase of Soissons. Clo- 
vis desired to reserve from the booty a vase belonging to 
the Church. All consented to it except one soldier, who, 
striking the vase with his battle-axe, cried out, " Thou shalt 
only have what the lot accords thee!" The following year 
Clovis was reviewing the army ; when he came to him who 
had struck the vase, reproving him for the condition of his 
arms, he took them from him, and threw them upon the 
ground. As the soldier stooped to pick them up, the king 
cleft his skull with a blow of his own axe, saying, " It shall 
be done to thee as thou didst to the vase last year at Sois- 
sons." Attention should here be drawn to the unlimited 
and at the same time restricted rights of this barbaric roy- 
alty ; Clovis has only his allotted portion of the booty, as 
one of the soldiers ; at the same time, he strikes a man dead, 
without judgment, and no one murmurs. 

Marriage of Clovis and Clotilda (493) . — Clovis next de- 
sired to lay his hand on Paris. He harassed it a long time. 
But a saintly girl, Sainte Genevieve, sustained the steadfast- 
ness of the inhabitants. A war between Clovis and the 
Thuringians, who had crossed the Rhine, then his marriage 
with Clotilda, niece of Gundebald, king of the Burgundians, 
gave another course to events. Clotilda was a Catholic, and 
she had obtained a promise that her first-born " should be 
consecrated to Christ by baptism." This was an event of 
the greatest importance. 

"War against the Alemanni; Conversion of Clovis (496). 
— The Alemanni, seeing the JFranks gain possession of so 
many rich Roman cities, resolved to force them to divide 
with them, and crossed the Rhine in great numbers. The 
Franks hastened to meet them, with Clovis at their head. 
The encounter took place probably in Alsace. The fight 
was terrible ; Clovis for a moment believed himself defeated, 
and, in his distress, invoked the God of Clotilda. Another, 
violent effort turned the tide of battle. The Alemanni, 
driven back across the Rhine, were pursued as far as Suabia, 
and they and the neighboring Bavarians recognized the 
supremacy of the Franks. 

The greater the victory, the more Clovis felt obliged to 
keep his word. Saint Remi baptized him and three thou- 



40 CLOVIS. 

sand of liis soldiers with liim. This baptism did not, as will 
be seen, change the habits of Clovis ; but by a curious acci- 
dent, he thus became the only orthodox prince in Gaul, or 
in the whole Christian world. The Gallo-Eoman popula- 
tion, oppressed by the Arian Burgundians and Visigoths, 
henceforth turned hopefully towards the converted chief of 
the Franks. 

The Burgundians rendered Tributary (500) and the Visi- 
goths conquered (507). — After having acquired the country 
between the Loire and the Somme, and gained the alliance 
of Armorica, Clovis attacked the Burgundians. Clotilda 
induced her husband to undertake this war in order to 
avenge the death of her father, who had been assassinated 
by Gundebald. The late king had left four sons, among 
whom his kingdom had been divided. The elder, Gunde- 
bald, in order to gain the whole inheritance, had killed, 
with his own hands, one of his brothers, the father of Clo- 
tilda, and caused another to be burned ; the youngest, 
Godegisel, still kept his portion, but feared a similar fate, 
and secretly called upon Clovis. Gundebald, defeated near 
Dijon (500), fled to Avignon. Clovis followed him thither, 
and forced him to acknowledge himself a tributary. The 
king of the Pranks had scarcely withdrawn when Gundebald 
surprised Godegisel and put him to death. 

Syagrius, after his defeat, had taken refuge among the 
Visigoths. These latter, already fearing a war with the 
Pranks, delivered up the fugitive. Gregory of Tours tells 
us that a great many people in all the Gallic states at that 
time desired extremely to be subject to the domination of 
the Franks. Finally Clovis one day said to his soldiers : 
" It is a great mortification to me that these Arians possess 
a part of Gaul. Let us march against them, and by the 
help of God, we will first defeat them, and then subjugate 
their country." This speech pleased all his warriors, and 
the army immediately set out towards Poitiers. According 
to the legends their advance was marked by miracles. The 
two armies met in the plain of Vouill^, near Poitiers. 
The king of the Visigoths, Avith his best soldiers, was killed 
(507). Poitiers, Saintes, Bordeaux, opened their gates to the 
conqueror; the following year he entered Toulouse. The 
Visigoths would have lost all their possessions north of the 
Pyrenees, but for the assistance sent by Theodoric the Great, 
king of the Ostrogoths of Italy. The West Goths retained 



CLoris. 41 

Septimania, while the country south of the Durance fell to 
the East Goths. 

Clovis Master of the Greater Part of Gaul. — With the 
exception of this narrow strip along the seacoast of the 
Mediterranean, Clovis controlled the whole country from 
the Rhine to the Pyrenees, either by his own authority or 
through his allies. A great barbarian kingdom was being 
formed. When Clovis entered Tours, he found there the 
envoys of the Eastern Emperor, Anastasius, who, delighted 
at seeing a rival to the great prince of the Ostrogoths of 
Italy arise on the other side of the Alps, sent to the king 
of the Eranks the titles of Consul and Patrician, with the 
purple tunic and the chlamys. The remembrance of the 
Roman Empire was still alive. Its titles, conferred by 
the Emperor, seemed to bestow right upon him who had 
before possessed only force. Clovis, in the eyes of the 
Gallo-Eomans, was no longer the barbarous and pagan con- 
queror, but the orthodox prince and the consul of Rome. 

Other Frankish Kings slain. — Clovis fixed his residence 
at Paris. He instigated Chloderic, son of Sigebert, king of 
the Eranks at Cologne, to murder his father, and then sent 
emissaries who assassinated Chloderic himself. When Clovis 
learned that Sigebert and his son were both dead, he came 
to Cologne, called the people together there, denied all com- 
plicity in either murder, and induced them to elect him as 
their king. 

In the war against Syagrius, Clovis had called to his aid 
Chararic, king of Therouanne ; but the latter held aloof, 
awaiting the result of the battle, intending to make an 
alliance with him who should be the victor. Clovis remem- 
bered this, and as soon as he could, he took him prisoner, 
with his son, and forced them both to receive the tonsure, 
commanding that they should be ordained priests. Soon 
after, fearing conspiracy on their part, he ordered that both 
should be beheaded. After their death, he seized upon 
their kingdom, their treasures, and their people. 

There was at Cambrai another king, named Ragnachar, so 
unbridled in his debaucheries that he scarcely spared his 
own relatives ; Clovis gave presents to the lexides of Rag- 
nachar to excite them against him. He afterwards marched, 
with his army, against that chief, and defeated him. The 
soldiers of Ragnachar themselves brought him and his 
brother to the conqueror, with their hands tied behind their 



42 CLoris. 

backs. Clovis slew them both with his own hand. These 
kings of whom mention has jnst been made were relatives 
of Clovis. Another Frankish king was killed by order of 
Clovis in the city of Le Mans. After their death, Clovis 
took possession of their kingdoms and all their treasures. 

Clovis Sole Chief of All the Frankish Tribes; his Death 
(511). — "So," says Gregory of Tours, ''he extended his 
power throughout all Gaul. . . . 

"After all these things had happened, Clovis died at 
Paris, where he was buried in the church of the Holy 
Apostles (Sainte-Genevi^ve), which had been built by the 
king and queen. He was forty-five years old, and had 
reigned thirty years." Clovis was an intelligent and fortu- 
nate barbarian. The battle of Soissons, a successful coup 
de main, was the beginning of his fortune ; the marriage 
with Clotilda, his conversion and baptism, the alliance with 
the bishops, completed it. 

To the Gallo-Eomans, abandoned by the Empire, the 
Catholic Church took the place of native country ; the bishop 
was the real chief of the city. Among the barbarians, all of 
whom they equally scorned, the bishops and the faithful 
preferred the Catholic Salians to the Arian Goths or Bur- 
gundians. Clovis, moreover, conducted himself generously 
and deferentially towards the Church. The very year of 
his death he presided at a great council. He respected the 
customs and laws of the Gallo-Romans ; he did not treat 
them as conquered subjects, and in reality he had not con- 
quered them. He had simply substituted his rule for that 
of other barbarians, and founded the first permanent mon- 
archy. 



THE SONS OF CLOVIS. 43 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE SONS OF CLOVIS, 
(511-564 A.D.) 

Division of the Frankish Monarchy among the Four Sons 
of Clovis. — At the death of Clovis, the state which he had 
founded comprised the whole of Gaul, with the exception 
of Gascony and Brittany. The Alemanni, also, were only 
nominally subject. The Burgundians, after having for a 
time paid tribute, refused to do so even during the life-time 
of Clovis ; and the cities of Aquitaine remained almost 
independent. The victorious nation, united solely for the 
purpose of conquest and pillage, had contented itself with 
driving the Visigoths out of Aquitaine, without taking their 
place. The war ended, the Franks had returned, with their 
booty, to their ancient dwelling-places in the north. 

The four sons of Clovis divided his heritage into four 
parts, and also his leiides, or followers, so that each one of 
them had almost an equal portion of the territory north 
of the Rhine, where the Frankish nation had established 
itself, and also some of the Roman cities of Aquitaine which 
paid rich tribute. Childebert was king of Paris, together 
with Poitiers, Perigueux, Saintes, and Bordeaux ; Chlothar, 
of Soissons, with Limoges ; Chlodomir, of Orleans, with. 
Bourges ; Theoderic, of Metz, with Cahors and Auvergne. 

These strange divisions paved the way for quarrels which 
soon broke out. The old hatred between the Gallic cities 
was also aroused by this, and their militia engaged more 
than once in bloody fights on account of their masters' 
quarrels. 

Conquest of Thuringia (530). — For several years the im- 
pulse given by Clovis continued. Theoderic victoriously 
repelled some Danes who had landed at the mouth of the 
Meuse, and, in 530, he made the conquest of Thuringia. 
This country had three kings, brothers, — Baderic, Herman- 
fried, and Berthar. Hermanfried killed Berthar; but, not 
daring to attack Baderic, he secretly instigated Theoderic 



44 THE SONS OF CLOVIS. 

to do so. Baderic was slain ; but Hermanfried did not keep 
faith witli Tlieoderic, and tliere arose between tliem a bitter 
hatred. Having assembled the Franks, King Theoderic 
marched against the Thuringians, massacred a great number 
of them, gained entire possession of their country, and 
caused Hermanfried to be assassinated. 

Conquesst of the Country of the Burgundians (534). — Clovis 
had rendered the Burgundians tributary ; but Clotilda was 
not satisfied. The death of Grundebald, in 516, was not 
sufficient to appease her hate. Instigated by her, her sons 
marched against the two kings of the Burgundians, Gunde- 
mar and Sigismund. The latter had recently smothered his 
son while asleep. The Burgundians were defeated, and 
Sigismund was captured ; Chlodomir caused him to be thrown 
down a well, with his wife and another son. But one day, 
as he was pursuing the enemy with great haste, he was 
surrounded and killed (524). His death postponed the 
conquest of Burgundy ; but, in 532, Chlothar and Childebert 
prepared a new expedition, and invited their brother Theod- 
eric to join them. The king of Austrasia refused. His 
followers thereupon threatening to abandon him, he promised, 
instead, to lead them into the wealthy district of Auvergne. 
Chlothar and Childebert then marched alone into Burgundy, 
laid siege to Autun, and, having put Gundemar to flight, 
occupied the whole country (534). Meantime, Theoderic 
kept his word with his followers ; he abandoned Auvergne 
to them, and it was completely devastated. 

War against the Visigoths and Ostrogoths (539-542). — 
Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, the powerful ruler of 
Italy, who had put a stop to the successes of Clovis, in 523 
took the Valais from the Burgundians, and three small dis- 
tricts from the Franks. On his death, the Franks, taking 
the offensive, ravaged the whole of Septimania (531). This 
province remained, nevertheless, in the possession of the 
Visigoths for two centuries more. In 533, the Austrasians 
recaptured their lost districts ; three years after, Vitiges, 
king of the Ostrogoths, ceded Provence to the Franks, in 
order to gain their alliance against the Greeks. Theodebert, 
who had succeeded his father, Theoderic, in the kingdom of 
Austrasia, led a numerous army into Italy, and defeated 
both the Goths and the Greeks (539). Childebert and 
Chlothar, in order to retain their followers, held out to 
them a promise of booty equally rich in Spain. They 



THE SONS OF CLOVIS. 45 

crossed the Pyrenees, and took Pampeluna, but were forced 
to retreat (542). 
Violent Deaths of the Frankish Princes (524-555). — In 

those days princes never lived to be old ; they died young 
from excessive dissipations, even when they escaped death 
at the hands of their kinsmen. Of the four sons of Clovis, 
Chlodomir, king of Orleans, was killed first, in 524, but 
killed by the hand of an enemy. He left three sons, who 
were brought up by Clotilda, their grandmother. One day 
Childebert sent secretly for his brother, bidding him come 
to Paris, that they might decide whether their nephews 
should be tonsured or killed. Chlothar came to Paris. 
Childebert had already spread a report among the people, 
that the two kings had determined to place these chiklren on 
the throne of their father. They despatched messengers to 
the queen, telling her to " send the children, that we may 
place them upon the throne." She, filled with joy, sent 
them. Having got the children into their power, Childebert 
and Chlothar sent another messenger to the queen, bearing a 
pair of scissors and a naked sword, to bid her choose whether 
they should live with shaven heads or be killed. In her 
grief, scarcely knowing what she said, she imprudently 
answered : " If they are not to succeed to the throne, I 
would rather see them dead than tonsured." Chlothar 
forthwith slew them both with his own hand, mounted his 
horse, and went off unconcerned. The third child, Chlod- 
wald, who was saved by the assistance of certain brave 
warriors, refusing an earthl}^ kingdom, consecrated himself 
to God, cut off his hair with his own hand, and became a 
cleric. The village to which he retired is named Saint- 
Cloud in memory of him. 

Upon the death of Theoderic, in 534, Chlothar and Childe- 
bert would gladly have treated his son Theodebert as they 
had treated the children of Chlodomir. But Theodebert, 
already arrived at the age of manhood, and beloved by his 
followers, was able to defend himself. He was the most 
active and brilliant of the Merovingian princes. After his 
remarkable expedition into Italy, he meditated another 
against Constantinople, but was killed, while hunting, in 
547. Theodebald, his son, died in 553, at the age of four- 
teen. Chlothar seized upon his inheritance. The new king 
of Austrasia was almost immediately obliged to quell a 
revolt among the Saxons, who refused to pay their tribute 



46 THE SONS OF CLOVIS. 

of five hundred cows. As lie was advancing against them 
with an army, they sent to him pledges of submission, 
which he was inclined to accept ; but the soldiers, enraged, 
fell upon him, tore up his tent, wounded him terribly, 
and drag^d him off, wishing to kill him. He followed 
them then, but they were defeated. It is necessary to bear 
in mind the habits and uncontrolled wills of these Frankish 
warriors, in order to comprehend the profound abasement 
of royalty under the first two dynasties, after their glorious 
beginning. 

CMothar I. Sole King of the Franks (558-561). — In 
558, Childebert, king of Paris, died. Chlothar seized upon 
his inheritance also, and thus became sole king of the 
Franks. He reigned only three years over the whole mon- 
archy of Clovis. His son had entered into a conspiracy 
with Childebert against him. After the death of his uncle, 
this prince took refuge in Brittany ; his father followed 
him thither, defeated the Bretons, who tried to defend him, 
and having taken him prisoner, shut him up, with his wife 
and his children, in a peasant's cabin, which he caused to be 
set on fire. Chlothar only survived his son one year, and 
died at his villa of Compi^gne, where he often went to 
enjoy, in the immense forests which surround it, those great 
hunts in which all the Merovingian kings took such delight. 

Saint Eadegund. — Among the wives of Clothar, there 
was one whose history may serve as a relief after so many 
bloody scenes. Radegund was the daughter of Berthar, 
king of Thuringia, and formed a part of the booty of 
Chlothar. Struck by her precocious beauty, he had her 
reared carefully, and afterwards married her. Eadegund 
viewed this marriage with horror. Her memory carried 
her unceasingly back to the midst of her murdered family, 
and she forgot them only when stealing away from the 
honors of her official position to live among the poor, to 
provide for their needs, and dress their most repulsive 
wounds, or to listen attentively to some learned cleric and 
converse at length upon the Holy Scriptures with some 
bishop. " She is a nun," said Chlothar brutally, " and not a 
queen." The cloister, indeed, was the asylum to Avhich this 
delicate and loving soul desired to flee from the coarse 
passions which surrounded her. One day, when the king 
had caused her last-remaining brother to be killed, she 
hastened to Noyon, and finding the holy Bishop Medard at 
the altar, begged him to consecrate her to the Lord. 



THE SONS OF GLOVIS. 47 

Chlothar was greatly incensed. Conquered at last, how- 
ever, by the patient resistance of the bishops, he permitted 
the daughter of the Thuringian kings to found a monastery 
for women, of which she became the patroness. She shut 
herself up there in 550, never to go out until hfer death in 
587. During this long seclusion she mingled the culture 
of letters with her good works and austere religious exer- 
cises. Eortunatus, the greatest poet of her time, became a 
priest so as not to be separated from her. 

Thus human nature never loses its rights ; in the midst 
of the exercise of the most unbridled passions there still 
exist some pure and delicate feelings. It was the Church 
which in the sixth century offered an asylum to those ten- 
der and elevated souls which increasing barbarism filled 
with dismay; the cloister for those who sought solitude 
and meditation ; the regular clergy for the exercise of the 
more active virtues, for those who did not fear to speak 
words of peace, justice, and love to men of blood. This is 
the reason why the worst periods of the Middle Ages pro- 
duced virtues which were unknown to the most brilliant 
periods of Paganism, and why, thanks to a few fine souls, 
animated by pure Christian spirit, humanity stopped on the 
edge of the abyss into which it was upon the point of being 
precipitated. 



48 THE SONS AND GRANDSONS OF CHLOTHAR I. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SONS AND GRANDSONS OF CHLOTHAR I. 
(561-613 A.D.) 

New Division (561). — After the death of Chlothar I. 
(561), the monarchy was again divided into four kingdoms : 
those of Paris, Soissons, Metz, and Burgundy. The prema- 
ture death of Charibert, king of Paris, reduced them to 
three, in 567. This last partition was of longer duration 
than the preceding ones, because it corresponded to real 
divisions, distinct nationalities. Guntram ruled the Bur- 
gundians ; Sigebert, the Austrasian, or eastern Franks ; and 
Chilperic, that mixed population of Gallo-Romans, called 
ISTeustrians. Aquitania continued to be divided between 
the three kings. Paris was to belong to all three, and 
neither one of them was to enter the city without the con- 
sent of the other two. Under the sons of Clovis the spirit 
of conquest was still rife among the Franks ; after that, 
there was for a century and a half only the spirit of rapine 
and murder. 

Opposition of Neustria and Austrasia. — In Austrasia (Bel- 
gium and Lorraine), which was nearer the Rhine, and filled 
with a more numerous Prankish population, German cus- 
toms prevailed ; and a crowd of petty chiefs formed there 
a powerful and warlike aristocracy, jealous of the kings. 
Neustria (lle-de-France, Normandy, etc.), more Roman, 
because it contained fewer barbarians and more ancient 
cities, accorded more authority to her kings, and preserved 
some characteristics and customs of the imperial adminis- 
tration. This difference of customs and condition created 
a spirit of political opposition between Neustria and Aus- 
trasia, which showed itself first in the rivalry between 
Fredegunde and Brunehilde, one the wife of Chilperic, and 
the other the wife of Sigebert; and later, between Ebroin 
and the mayors of Austrasia. 

Invasion of the Avars and the Lombards (562-676) , — A 
new tribe came from Asia by the route the Huns had taken, 



THE SONS AND GRANDSONS OF CHLOTHAR I. 49 

and dashed into the Prankish empire. Sigebert, king of 
Austrasia, defeated the Avars first, in 562. Six years later, 
they penetrated as far as Bavaria and Franconia, defeated 
Sigebert, and made him prisoner, but soon released him, 
and returned into Pannonia. At the same time, the Lom- 
bards, who had lately become masters of Italy, invaded the 
states of Guntram at three different points (571-576), but 
were driven back beyond the Alps. 

Murder of Galeswintha (567) . — While the king of Aus- 
trasia was fighting in the interest of the common cause, his 
brothers took advantage of his absence, to pillage his western 
provinces. To this injury Chilperic added another. Gales- 
wintha, his wife, was the sister of Brunehilde, Sigebert's 
queen, both being daughters of Athanagild, king of the 
Visigoths, who had hoped to purchase, by this union, the 
friendship of the Franks. Brunehilde, a woman of masculine 
spirit, had accepted without repugnance this marriage with 
one of those chiefs, who, in the eyes of the Goths, softened 
by the warm climate of Spain, were still barbarians. But 
Galeswintha, less ambitious of power, had seen with terror 
the dawn of the day when she would be obliged to leave 
her mother, and go to find in the far-off north an unknown 
husband. Sorrowfully leaving her mother, she journeyed, 
under escort of Frankish warriors, from Toledo to Eouen, 
where the marriage was to be celebrated. 

Even before her arival, Galeswintha had a rival, Frede- 
gunde, whose name is infamous for bitterness and implaca- 
ble cruelty. Set aside for the moment by the arrival of 
Galeswintha, she soon regained her former ascendancy over 
Chilperic. The queen ventured to complain, then demanded 
to return to her own country ; but Chilperic feared to lose 
the treasure she had brought him. One night he sent into 
her chamber a trusty servant, who strangled her while she 
slept. 

Murder of Sigebert (575). — Brunehilde endeavored to pre- 
vail upon her husband to make war and avenge her sister's 
death. But Guntram interposed. The affair was submitted 
to the decision of the assembled people, and by it Chilperic 
was compelled to deliver to Brunehilde five cities of Aqui- 
tania, which he had set apart as a dower for Galeswintha. In 
575, he endeavored to revoke this cession and invaded the do- 
mains of Sigebert in Aquitania. The king of Austrasia has- 
tened to meet him, followed by an immense army. Chilperic 



50 THE SONS AND GRANDSONS OF CHLOTHAR I. 

again ceded the cities ; but soon fresh encroachments called 
Sigebert back to Neustria. No power could repel him; 
he entered Paris, and the Neustrians promised to receive 
him as their king. Chilperic retained only Tournai ; Sige- 
bert marched against him in order to take that town also 
from him. But Fredegnnde was watching over her husband 
as well as herself ; two soldiers whom she had imbued with 
fanatical zeal repaired to Sigebert's camp, obtained audi- 
ence of him, and slew him with long, poisoned knives. 

Murder of Chilperic and Two of His Sons (584) . — Bru- 
nehilde, then at Paris with her treasures and her young son 
Childebert II., was at the mercy of Chilperic. The king of 
Neustria took the treasures. A faithful friend of Sigebert 
escaped to Metz with the child. Though he was only five 
years old, the leudes proclaimed him king, and gave him a 
mayor of the palace to govern in his stead. Such a minority 
was favorable to their desires for independence. 

Meanwhile Fredegnnde appalled ISTeustria by her assas- 
sinations. Her husband had, by a previous marriage, two 
sons, Meroveus and Clovis, whose rights were prior to those 
of her son Chlothaj. Meroveus either had himself killed by 
one of his own followers because of the queen's persecutions, 
or fell by the hand of one of her confidants. His friends 
perished by the most atrocious means. The Bishop of 
Bouen, who had blessed this marriage, was himself murdered 
in his church, on the steps of the altar, while celebrating 
mass. Clovis was slain soon after, then one of his sis- 
ters, and Audowere, their mother. Chilperic himself was 
perhaps one of Fredegunde's victims. One evening, on his 
return from the chase to his royal villa of Chelles, he was 
stabbed, as he dismounted from his horse, by one of the 
queen's servants (584) : some, it is true, accuse Brunehilde 
of the deed. 

This prince, whom Gregory of Tours calls a Nero, a 
Herod, possessed nevertheless, in the midst of all his vices 
and barbarity, some instincts of administration, and some 
literary tastes. He made verses, and admired the organ- 
ization established by the emperors. Doubtless what he 
especially prized was their financial system. " King Chil- 
peric," says Gregory of Tours, "caused to be drawn up, 
in all parts of his kingdom, tax-lists, after new and burden- 
some systems, which caused many persons to leave their 
cities and abandon their property." The tribes, by frequent 



THE SONS AND GRANDSONS OF CIILGTIIAR I. 51 

revolts, protested against the renewal of that exorbitant 
fiscal system, which had brought about the ruin of the old 
Empire. 

Conspiracies; Treaty of Andelot (587). — Fredegunde had 
bestowed upon Guntram the guardianship of her son, the 
young Chlothar II., but the king of Burgundy felt that he 
was surrounded on all sides by dangers. He feared the 
leudes, who, from day to day, grew less and less willing to 
be subject to royalty ; and a great conspiracy had just been 
organized in the south. Aquitania, which had continued to 
be entirely Eoman, had endeavored to separate from the 
barbarous countries of the north, and maintain itself under 
a king of its own, and had nearly succeeded (585). 

Another plot, even more formidable, was form.ed in 587, 
among the leudes of Austrasia and of Burgundy. The object 
was to assassinate the two kings and divide the country 
among the conspirators. The plot was discovered, and the 
conspirators perished. Childebert and Guntram, alarmed, 
had an interview at Andelot (Haute-Marne), at which they 
agreed that the inheritance of either one of them who 
should die without children, should pass to the survivor; 
that the leudes should no longer he permitted to change 
their allegiance from one king to the other at will ; but, on 
the other hand, the leudes were guaranteed in the possession 
of the lands which they held by royal grant. 

Power of Bninehilde in Austrasia, and in Burgundy. — 
Guntram died in 593 ; Childebert II. reunited the two Iting- 
doms, and tried to take possession of that of his cousin, 
Chlothar II., the son of Fredegunde ; his troops were de- 
feated, and he died soon after (596). The eldest of his sons, 
Theodebert II., obtained Austrasia ; the other, Theoderic 
II., Burgundy. Brunehilde hoped to reign in Austrasia 
under her grandson, as she had reigned under her son. But 
she irritated the Austrasians by endeavoring to restore the 
state to some degree of order, and subjecting the leudes to 
stricter obedience, and was driven out (599). An asylum 
being offered her in Burgundy, at the court of her other 
grandson, she carried thither the same thirst for power, 
combining, it must be acknowledged, with her imperious 
ambition, higher ideas than were usually entertained by the 
princes of that time. She had a taste for arts and letters ; 
she perceived that kings should not only enjoy the tribute 
paid them by the people, but that they should give, in 



52 THE SONS AND GRANDSONS OF CHLOTHAR I. 

exchange, order and useful public works ; she built churches, 
caused roads to be constructed, and called to mind the 
Eoman administration which she would have wished to 
restore. Unhappily, in her opinion, all means were justifi- 
able, especially assassination. She had Desiderius, Bishop 
of Vienne, stoned to death, and expelled St. Columban, an 
Irish monk, who went through Gaul, seeking to discipline 
the monks and teaching the princes themselves humanity. 

In the midst of these court intrigues there were wars 
among the nations. The Neustrians had twice defeated the 
Austrasians, in 593 and 596 ; but they were completely 
routed, in 600 and 604, by the Burgundians; Paris was 
taken. All would have been over with Chlothar II. if the 
king of Austrasia had not saved him by making a treaty 
with him. Brunehilde, furious at seeing him escape the 
vengeance with which she had pursued him for thirty 
years, laid the blame of it on Theodebert. In 610, defeated 
by his brother, Theoderic, he was put to death with his 
children. His brother survived him only three years (613). 

Conspiracy against Brunehilde ; her Death (613). — There 
were now no more men to reign in Austrasia and Burgundy, 
— only four children and their grandmother, Brunehilde. 
The nobles groaned at the thought of finding themselves at 
the mercy of that imperious woman, and a plot was secretly 
contrived. While marching against Chlothar U. she was 
surrendered to him by her own soldiers. He reproached 
her for the death of ten kings, abandoned her for three 
whole days to the insults of his army, and then bound her 
to the tail of a wild horse, to be torn in pieces. The four 
sons of Theoderic II. had been already murdered ; Chlothar 
II. found himself, like his grandfather, Chlothar I., sole 
king of the Eranks (613). The horrible Fredegunde, his 
mother, had died, " full of years," in 597. 



CONDITION OF GAUL IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. 53 



CHAPTER IX. 

CONDITION OP GAUL IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. 

Disorder and Gloom of the Period. — Humanity has 
passed through few periods so unhappy as the sixth and 
seventh centuries. The documents of that sad time show 
the want of discipline, the brutal violence of the barbarians, 
the absence of all order, the revival of the old animosities 
between city and city, between canton and canton, and 
everywhere a sort of return to a state of nature. Pillage, 
fire, or some sudden attack and murder were always to be 
feared. Each year these barbarous kings made war, and 
each year they made peace. Then they mutually surren- 
dered hostages ; these were always the sons of rich Gallo- 
Eomans, who in the earlier disturbances had been reduced 
to servitude by both parties. To complete the description 
of this deplorable period, let us add that all mental culture 
had ceased; that the Latin language became distorted in 
those uncivilized mouths ; that neither king nor chiefs, no 
one, in fact, outside of the Church and the municipal admin- 
istrations, cared to learn either to read or write. Civiliza- 
tion retreated and seemed ready to disappear under the 
ruins piled up by the barbarians. 

Three Societies in Gaul. — When the invasion passed 
over Gaul, breaking up old ties and bringing in new political 
and social ideas, and new nations, three societies confronted 
each other, one of which served as a bond between the 
other two ; the Gallo-Romans, the barbarians, and between 
them, recruited from both sides, the Church. 

The Clergy ; Important Part played by the Bishops. — 
The Church vanquished its conquerors, led them to the 
foot of her altars, made them bow their heads to her com- 
mand, and continued to play in the state the political part 
which the Emperor had allowed her to take ; but by contact 
with barbarism she herself took on some degree of rude- 
ness. Germans and Franks aspired to the honors of the 
episcopate, and brought into the churches customs unknown 



54 CONDITION OF GAUL IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. 

before. The grand intellectual movement wliicli formerly 
animated the religious society was retarded and finally 
stopped. The clergy, however, preserved the tradition of 
ancient culture, and if their knowledge diminished, their 
influence increased, in the cities, where the bishop was the 
real chief; with the kings, who found wise counsellors 
among them ; and among the nobles, who repaid their prayers 
by rich gifts of alms, preferring to do penance by giving 
lands to the Church rather than by giving good examples to 
their followers. Armed with excommunication, the bishops 
inspired in the most violent men, even in the kings, a 
salutary fear; and they added to their moral authority 
a real power, by obtaining from Chlothar I. or Chlothar II. 
the right to receive, concurrently with the count or gov- 
ernor of the city, the right to prosecute the crimes of theft, 
sedition, and arson. This participation of the clergy in the 
affairs of the world was fortunate, because there was more 
intelligence, impartiality, and gentleness in their courts than 
in those of the barbarians. They thus formed a vanguard for 
society, and the eighty-three councils held in Gaul from the 
sixth to the eighth century attest not only the political ac- 
tivity of the church, and the fervor of its zeal, but also its con- 
stant efforts to improve the national customs and to introduce 
into the social organization more justice and less inequality. 
The Church courageou.sly took the afilicted under her pro- 
tection. She gathered to her bosom the widow, the orphan, 
the poor, the proscribed, and it was because she had all the 
weak ones on her side that she was so strong ; for the weak 
and the oppressed then constituted the greater portion of 
the world. 

The Monasteries. — Beside the churches rose the monas- 
teries. St. Martin had introduced the cenobitical life into 
the West. He had founded, in 390, the monastery of Liguge, 
near Poitiers, and later, that of Marmoutiers, near Tours. 
Thereafter, convents multiplied rapidly ; in the sixth cen- 
tury there were already 238. The cenobites lived without 
a general rule. But about 530, St. Benedict drew up, for 
the monks of Monte Cassino, statutes which were promptly 
adopted throughout Gaul. These wise regulations threw 
aside useless maceration, and divided the time of the monks 
into periods of prayer, mental and manual labor ; they were 
obliged to cultivate the land, but also to read and copy 
manuscripts. Some little literary life was thus preserved 



CONDITION OF GAUL IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. 55 

in the retirement of tlie monasteries, and its dependencies 
formed what are now called model farms ; they presented 
examples of activity and industry for the laborer, the me- 
chanic, and the landowner. 

The Gallo-Romans. — The barbarians had overthrown the 
imperial administration, but not the internal organization 
of the cities. A Prankish court was established in each 
one to represent the king, to collect the taxes which the 
G-allo-Romans continued to pay, and to administer justice. 
The conquered people retained their curia, their magistracies, 
the practice of the Roman law ; and these institutions have, 
in a great number of the cities, survived the Middle Ages. 
The Gallo-Roman society presents three principal classes : 
the land-owning freemen, the coloni attached to the soil 
which they cultivated, and the domestic or agricultural 
slaves. The free Gallo-Romans lived mostly in the cities, 
according to the customs of Greek and Roman society, — 
the rich on their incomes, the poor on the remnant of in- 
dustry and commerce that still remained. The barbarians, 
on the contrary, scorned to dwell in towns, and preferred 
to remain like those on the other side of the Rhine, in the 
open air, under the great trees, and within reach of the 
hunting-grounds. The more wealthy of the Gallo-Roman 
landowners followed the example of the masters of the 
country. Thus an important revolution was accomplished. 
The preponderance of power possessed by the cities among 
the ancients passed into the country, and so remained 
throughout the Middle Ages. 

The Barbarians; Status of Lands and Individuals. — After 
the conquest, the Franks had not -dispossessed the pro- 
prietors of the soil,' as a general rule ; but their kings had 
reserved for themselves the lands of the imperial treasury 
and many others, which had become vacant during the 
widespread confusion of the invasion. It was from these 
estates that they took the domains with which they re- 
warded their confidential followers, — domains called allodial 
{all od, land held in full possession). After their conver- 
sion, princes and warriors made numerous donations to the 
clergy, who became very great landed proprietors. The 
rest of the Gallic territory remained subject to tribute. 

Individuals were thus divided: 1. Free men, Gallic or 
Frankish, who were obliged to bring gifts to the king, and 
owed military service to the nation in time of war ; and tho 



56 CONDITION OF GAUL IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. 

leudes, who were bound to fulfil certain duties towards those 
from whom they held their land. The royal leudes, from 
among whom the king usually chose the dukes and counts 
whom he sent to command armies, to rule over provinces 
or cities, were those who had received domains directly 
from the king, and, with the less dependent chieftains, 
formed an aristocracy, whose power and pretensions were 
daily increased. 2. The litus, who, like the Roman colonus, 
could not be removed at will from the land which he culti- 
vated as a farmer, and for which he paid the proprietor a 
fixed rent. 3. The slave. 

In the penal system of the barbaric laws, everything — 
murders as well as thefts — could be compensated for by 
payment of money (wergeld). The following are a few 
examples of that curious social hierarchy, indicated by the 
price of each one's blood. For the murder of a free-born 
leude of the king among the Salians, 1500 solidi (the solidus 
= fSl.SO in weight, ten times as much in value). The 
freedman, leude of the king, among the Salians, 900 solidi. 
A count, a free-born priest, a free judge, 600. A deacon, 
among the Salians, 400. The free Salian, 200. The slave 
who was a good worker in gold, 150. The litus, 100. The 
freedman, 80. The barbarian slave, 55. 

Barbarian Codes. — Each German tribe had its own code 
of law. That of the Visigoths and the Burgundians nearly 
resembled the Eoman law, under which the clergy and 
Gallo-Romans lived. We also have the laws of the Ale- 
manni, the Bavarians, the Ripuarians, and the Salians. 

Three principal characteristics distinguished them from 
the Eoman law. In the first place, they are especially 
penal codes, which indicates a society singularly rude and 
violent. In the second place, they allow all sorts of in- 
juries to be redeemed by money, the prices varying accord- 
ing to the degree of the offence. Finally, they admit, as 
proof of the facts, the witness of a certain number of rela- 
tives and friends, whether of the accused or the accuser. 
The judge, however, could order combat, or judicial duel, 
and the ordeals of cold water, boiling water, and the red- 
hot iron. In the first case, the accused, being bound hand 
and foot, and thrown into a tub full of water, was regarded 
as criminal if he floated. In the second, he plunged his 
hand to the bottom of a vase filled with boiling water ; if, 
on withdrawing it, there was no trace of scalding, he was 



CONDITION OF GAUL IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. 57 

acqtiitted. It was considered a judgment of God. In the 
trial by red-hot iron, the accused had to carry a bar of red- 
hot iron some distance ; if, three days after, his hand was 
without a wound, or if the wound appeared to be in a certain 
condition, the accused was innocent. Tortures and punish- 
ments were reserved for slaves and serfs convicted of crime. 
The freeman was usually subject only to wergeld. In the 
judicial combat, women and old men could be represented 
by a champion. 

The Salic law allowed no woman to inherit land for which 
a Frank owed military service. This exclusion was natural ; 
later, the kingdom was declared similar to Salic land, and 
women have always been excluded from the throne of 
France. 

Disorganization of Slavery. — The increasing progress of 
moral doctrines had already robbed the ancient servitude 
of some of its rigor, when the Church, by preaching the doc- 
trine of human fraternity and common redemption, dealt 
it the most deadly blow. Enfranchisements became more 
frequent, and the slave was less at the disposal of his mas- 
ter. Then came the invasion, which, disorganizing every- 
thing else, also disorganized slavery. In that time of general 
misfortune, the distance between master and slave dimin- 
ished. Luxury disappeared, and, German manners being 
adopted, there were fewer domestic slaves. Relegated to 
the country, they became like the Roman coloni, serfs of 
the glebe ; that is, attached to the soil, and obliged to do 
only certain work. This new class gained numbers from 
above and below. Slaves rose in it, and ruined freemen 
joined it. In the ninth and tenth centuries this transforma- 
tion was still in operation ; at that time there were scarcely 
any slaves remaining ; there were only serfs : but eight cen- 
turies more were needed to destroy this second servitude. 

Government of the Merovingians ; the King. — The kings 
were elected, but always chosen from the family of the 
Merovingians. The badge of their kingship was their long 
hair. Cutting it off was equivalent to deposing them. Be- 
yond the Rhine, the kings possessed only a very restricted 
authority. But it was inevitable that Germanic royalty, 
henceforth exercised iipon tribes accustomed to the absolute 
power of the Roman emperors, should be greatly modified. 
The Gallo-Romans taught this royalty the traditions of the 
Empire; the bishops imbued it with a high idea of its 



58 CONDITION OF GAUL IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. 

power, whicli tliey represented to it as delegated by God ; 
and, dnring nearly a century and a half, these kings exercised 
great power. The Merovingian king dressed after the fash- 
ion of the Romans, wrote and spoke in Latin, and sat, as 
the Emperor had done, in the prgetorium, to judge suitors ; 
he was addressed by the titles of lord (xlominus) and maj- 
esty ; he made laws and constitutions by his own authority : 
he declared war and signed treaties of peace. His power 
was unlimited. 

In Germany there had been an assembly of the people, 
in which was vested the real sovereignty ; these assemblies 
were no longer possible in vast kingdoms over which the 
freemen were widely scattered. In the sixth century a 
sort of political assembly is sometimes found; but it is 
rather a gathering of the aristocracy than a national as- 
sembly. 

Administration. — About the king were a great number 
of oificers holding positions in the personal service of the 
king and in the public service. There were the major domus, 
or mayor of the palace, an officer whom we shall encounter 
later ; the marshal, the treasurer, the cup-bearer, the cham- 
berlains, and a crowd of inferior officers, porters, couriers, 
etc. Political functions belonged more particularly to the 
count of the palace, who sat in the king's court, and to 
the referendary, a sort of chancellor, and keeper of the 
royal seal, which he affixed to the royal acts. These officers 
were the domestici; that is, they formed the king's house- 
hold. With them lived the antrustions, or companions of 
the king. But the court {jjalatium) was the resort for all 
important personages, — counts, dukes, and bishops, — who 
formed its floating population. All these people could be 
called into the king's council, and sit in the tribunal. The 
court had no fixed residence ; the king went from villa to 
villa, according to necessity or pleasure. 

The royal authority was represented in the counties, which 
corresponded to the civitates of the Romans, by the counts. 
The count was judge, general, and financial administrator. 
He was judge of the Gallo-Romans and of the Franks. He 
convoked the ban of the freemen and led them to the army. 
He collected the public taxes, which were only the old Ro- 
man taxes. Many of these officers abused their power ; a 
few were faithful officers of justice. Superior to the count 
was the duke, whose administrative jurisdiction comprised 



CONDITION OF GAUL IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. 59 

several counties. But this territorial division was neither 
regular nor permanent. 

The Bishops. — Under the Christian emperors the author- 
ity of the bishops had been very great. They had received 
the right of arbitration, even of judgment, when the two 
parties consented ; the right to hear complaints against 
unjust judges, to watch over the provisioning of the cities, 
to visit prisons, to protect widows, minors, orphans, and the 
poor. The barbarian invasion increased these rights. A 
bishop could be judged only by the bishops of his province, 
and each one claimed to be sole judge of the ecclesiastics 
and even the monks in his diocese. The Merovingian kings 
were compelled to respect these powerful personages ; at 
the same time they knew how to make them the instru- 
ments of their own power. First of all, they laid their 
hands on the ecclesiastical elections, which, though made 
by the people and by the clergy of the city, had always re- 
quired royal confirmation. But the Merovingian kings, not 
content with this right, nominated directly, and sometimes 
made singular choices. The frequent councils in which 
were assembled the bishops of a province or a kingdom, 
formed another element of power for the Church. The 
Merovingian kings watched over these assemblies, often 
took part in them, and in such cases presided over them. 
Their authority was necessary for the assembling of a coun- 
cil, and its canons required the royal approbation in order 
to be valid. 

Decline of the Royal Power. — Why was it that this great 
power declined so rapidly ? Why did the kings called rois 
faineants so immediately succeed Dagobert, the most power- 
ful of the Merovingian kings ? Because the kings them- 
selves weakened the royal authority by grants of land and 
privileges which ruined both their treasury and their power. 
At the expense of their domains, they made grants of lands 
which were, not benefices conceded temporarily in exchange 
for military service, but property alienated without other 
condition than a vague obligation of fidelity. Commendation 
also personally attached some of their subjects to the kings. 
He who was commended passed under the protection of the 
chieftain to whom he promised his services. 

Public authority would have been in danger, if the king 
alone had thus formed about him a sort of clientage, by 
grants of land and commendation ; but the clergy and the 



60 CONDITION OF GAUL IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. 

leudes also gave lands in order to establish, ties of fidelity 
between themselves and those whom tliey rewarded. The 
Churcli, especially, made grants of its lands, called benefices 
or 2J'>'ecaria. These grants are the origin of the benefice or 
fief which afterwards played so prominent a part in the 
Middle Ages. Commendation was also made to the clergy 
and the leudes, for in those days the weak had great need of 
the protection of the strong. Many freemen who should have 
remained followers of the king, joined the clientage of pow- 
erful personages. Thus were formed in the state groups of 
individuals whose chieftains stood between them and the 
king. 

The kings did still more to bring ruin upon public author- 
ity when they granted, together with a domain, what was 
called immunity; this is to say, exemption from taxation. 
Since the revenues of justice, penalties and confiscations, 
were included, this carried with it exemption from royal 
justice and royal authority. The Merovingians were not 
long masters of the counts. These offices, remaining in the 
same family, finally came to be considered hereditary prop- 
erty. As the kings had need of the leudes in the civil wars, 
then so frequent, they sought to attach them to themselves 
by grants. The latter became conscious of their power by 
fijiding that they were necessary ; they therefore drew 
nearer to each other, and likewise to the bishops, and soon 
nothing remained to the Merovingians themselves. The 
last princes of that house would have been powerless, even 
if they had not merited their name of rois faineants (do- 
nothing kings). 



CHLOTHAR II., DAGOBERT, ETC. 0,1 



CHAPTER X. 

CHLOTHAR II. AND DAGOBERT SOLE KINGS OP THE 
FRANKS. — AFTER THEM, ANARCHY. 

(613-687 A.D.) 

Chlothar II. Sole King (613-628). —In 615, under Chlo- 
thar II., who by the death of Brunehilde and the chiklren 
of Theoderic had become sole king, there was a considerable 
effort made to organize that society whose disorder has just 
been described. Seventy-nine bishops united, at Paris, with 
the leudes of the three kingdoms, and Chlothar sanctioned, 
by an edict or perpetual constitution, the decisions of that 
assembly. The election of bishops was especially reserved 
to the clergy and the people of the dioceses, the king only 
reserving the right to confirm the election, after which the 
metropolitan was to consecrate the person elected. A cleric 
could only be called to account by his bishop ; the direct 
taxes recently established were abolished ; but the tolls on 
the highways and the duties on entering the cities were 
continued; the judges of the counties were to be always 
chosen from among the landowners of the district, a measure 
extremely favorable to the aristocracy. Many of the arti- 
cles of this constitution were directed aga.inst royalty, for 
the advantage of that aristocracy, both ecclesiastical and 
military, which was being established. 

The chroniclers know nothing further concerning the reign 
of Chlothar II., whom they represent as kind and good to 
every one, learned in letters, fearing God, and a munificent 
patron of the churches, the priests, and the poor ; whose only 
fault was too ardent love of pleasure and the chase. The 
mayors of the palace of Burgundy and Austrasia made him 
swear that he would not deprive them of their functions, and 
that he would not interfere in the elections to that office, a 
matter exclusively reserved to the leudes. In 622 Chlothar 
II. made his son Dagobert king of the Austrasians, under 
the direction of the mayor. Pippin of Landen, and of St. 
Arnulf, Bishop of Metz, These two persons were ancestors 



62 CHLOTHAR IL, DAGOBERT, ETC. 

of tlie Caroliiigian house ; the son of Arnulf had married 
a daughter of Pippin of Landen, and Pippin of Heristal 
was born of tliat union. 

Dagobert Sole King (628-638) ; Height of the Merovin- 
gian Power. — Dagobert, who succeeded his father in 628, 
was the most powerful of tlie Merovingian kings. Under 
him tlie Vascones or Basques, who inhabited the country 
south of the Garonne, were conquered, and promised obedi- 
ence. The dukes of the Bretons made formal submission ; 
the greater part of the Prisons and Saxons paid tribute, and 
the Thuringians, the Alemanni, and the Bavarians submis- 
sively received the commands of the king. , The empire of the 
Pranks extended from the Weser to the Pyrenees, and from 
the Western Ocean to the frontiers of Bohemia. Dagobert 
was the ally of the emperors of Constantinople, and inter- 
vened in the affairs of the other barbarian kingdoms. 

At home, Dagobert applied himself to rendering just judg- 
ment. He visited his kingdoms in person, to repress disturb- 
ances. He had the laws of the barbarian tribes, his subjects, 
written down, and, though liberal to the clergy, he took 
back from the churches and convents a great number of 
domains diverted by usurpation from the royal possession. 
Dagobert founded the abbey of St. Denis, encouraged the 
remnant of art still lingering among the people, and mani- 
fested a taste for luxury unknown to his savage predecessors. 
The name of the goldsmith Eligius (St. Eloi) is remembered 
in connection with his. 

Symptoms of Approaching Decline. — The reign of Dago- 
bert was also the beginning of reverses. He was obliged to 
cede the greater part of Aquitania to his brother Charibert. 
He was unsuccessful in an expedition against the Wends of 
Bohemia and Moravia. During his life-time, but especially 
after his death, disturbances increased. The Saxons refused 
tribute ; the Thuringians and the Alemanni paid only a 
nominal obedience. In Gaul itself the national heads of 
the Gascons, the Aquitanians and the Burgundians, resumed 
their independence, and in the provinces which remained 
loyal the kings were confronted by powerful officers who 
robbed them of their authority. 

The Mayors of the Palace. — Under the sons of Dagobert, 
the monarchical authority declined rapidly ; the power of 
the mayors of the palace increased, and the Carolingian 
family made its appearance in history. The mayor of the 



CHLOTHAR IL, DAGO BERT, ETC. 63 

palace, major domus, was an officer who had had charge of 
the management of the royal household. Under the Mero- 
vingians, each prince appears to have had several of them, 
perhaps one for each of his permanent residences. Later, 
there was only one for each kingdom. The office then, 
became important, because to the administration of the 
royal household was added that of the royal domain ; then, 
as the private revenues of the king were confounded with 
the public revenues, the mayor of the palace had the admin- 
istration of the treasury of the state. He had the care and 
education of the royal children, and during minorities, 
which were frequent, his position became preponderant. In 
613, with the consent of the nobles who had surrendered 
Brunehilde to Chlothar II., three mayors of the palace were 
instituted, one in each of the three kingdoms. But though 
elected by the nobles, these mayors inspired them with fear, 
and the office would certainly have been suppressed if it 
had not become hereditary in the Austrasian family of the 
Carolingians. 

The Sons of Dagobert (638-656). — When Dagobert died 
(638), his two sons were still children : one, Sigebert II., 
reigned in Austrasia under the tutelage of Pippin of Landen ; 
the other, Clovis II., under that of Erkenwald, another 
mayor, in Neustria and Burgundy. Sigebert died in 656, 
and Griniwald, son and successor of Pippin in the mayoralty 
of Austrasia, believed himself sufficiently assured of the 
support of the nobles to make his own son king. Clovis 
overthrew the usurper and reunited the monarchy (656) ; 
but he died the same year. 

Ebroin Mayor (659-681); St. Leger.— Mayor Erkenwald 
left the royalty undivided between the sons of Clovis II. 
Chlothar III., the elder, appears to have reigned under 
the guardianship of his mother, Queen Bathilda, an Anglo- 
Saxon slave whom pirates had brought and sold on the 
shores of the Prankish country. Bathilda did not forget 
her origin, and during her ten years of power she strove to 
ameliorate the condition of the slaves and the poor. But 
tlie nobles grew tired of the authority of a woman whom 
they found always surrounded by bishops. In 664 they 
murdered her principal counsellor, the Bishop of Paris, and 
Bathilda retired to a monastery. 

Erkenwald died in 659, and was succeeded by Ebroin. 
Ebroin was an ambitious man, full of talent, who proposed to 



64 CHLOTHAR IL, DAGOBEET, ETC. 

raise the royal authority, now entirely under his control, since 
there were then only children on the throne, — Chlothar III., 
in ISTeiistria and Burgundy ; and, since 660, Childeric II., in 
Austrasia. The aristocracy, and therefore anarchy, was tri- 
umphant, Ebroin undertook to put an end to this turbu- 
lence of the nobles ; he exiled some, deprived others of their 
estates, caused others to be killed, and refused to give the 
offices of duke and count to those who possessed great estates 
in the provinces of which they asked the command. At 
the death of Chlothar III., in 670, he placed on the throne, 
by his own authority alone, the third son of Clovis II., 
Theoderic III. Consequently the office of mayor of the 
palace, which the nobles had rendered so powerful, in order 
to make it a weapon of defence against royalty, turned 
against them, and Ebroin undertook the fulfilment of 
Brunehilde's designs against the Frankish aristocracy. The 
bishops and leucles of the three kingdoms took up arms 
against him, under the direction of Leger, Bishop of Autun. 
The mayor and his king were captured, tonsured, and shut 
up as monks in a monastery ; Childeric II. of Austrasia was 
left sole king (670). 

But the quarrel soon recommenced between the leudes 
and the new king. St. Leger was shut up in the same 
prison where Ebroin was confined. The two enemies be- 
came, for the moment, reconciled. The death of Childeric 
II. opened for them the door of the cloister (673). There 
was then such terrible confusion " that it was believed that 
the advent of Antichrist was near at hand." Ebroin, being 
the ablest man, was the first to recover his power from the 
chaos ; he defeated the leudes, caused St. Leger's eyes to be 
put out, and afterwards had him beheaded (678), and re- 
stored Theoderic III. 

It was not so easy to overcome the aristocracy of Aus- 
trasia. After the violent death of Dagobert II., who was 
assassinated in 678, the nobles of Austrasia, renouncing 
kingship, had bestowed the titles of dukes of the Franks 
upon their mayor, Martin, and his cousin Pippin. An Aus- 
trasian army set out, in 680, to attack Ebroin ; but it was 
defeated, and Martin, drawn into a conference, was killed 
by Ebroin. The mayor of the palace of ISTeustria was him- 
self assassinated the following year, and with him fell the 
last defender of the Merovingian royalty. 

Battle of Testry (687). — The successor of Ebroin pos- 



CHLOTHAR IL, DAGOBERT, ETC. 65 

sessed neitlier liis energy nor liis talents. He attacked 
Pippin ; but Eonian France, as Neustria began to be called, 
was conquered at Testry (near P^ronne) by Teutonic 
Prance (687). This battle really ended the first dynasty 
of the Prankish kings. Por though the degenerate Mero- 
vingians bore the title till 752, they no longer possessed 
even a shadow of power. 



FOURTH PERIOD. 

Carolingian France (687-887). 
CHAPTER XL 

RBCONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE AND OF AUTHORITY 
BY THE MAYORS OF AUSTRASIA. 

• (687-753 A.D.) 

Origin of the Carolingians. — The empire of the Mero- 
vingians reached its height under Dagobert, and after him 
it slowly declined in the incapable hands of the rois faine- 
ants. But in the midst of the Kipuarian Franks, who had 
retained the warlike energy of the first conquerors, there 
had arisen a family who united all the characteristics then 
requisite for exercising a powerful influence. It possessed 
very extensive estates, and therefore many warriors were 
attached to its fortunes. All of its members were distin- 
guished for wealth and courage, and a few of them for piety. 
Three of them successively occui:)ied the episcopal see of 
Metz. Pippin of Landen was mayor of Austrasia under 
Chlothar II. " In all his judgments," says his biographer, 
"Pippin studied to conform his decisions to the rules of 
divine justice, and took constant counsel of the blessed 
Arnulf, Bishop of Metz, who, he knew, lived in the love and 
fear of God." The wife and daughter of Pippin of Landen 
died in the odor of sanctity, and Pippin himself was at a 
later time regarded as a saint. Armilf had been already 
canonized, and his grandson was a saint. 

The heads of the family had held the mayoralty of the 
kingdom during the seventh century, in hereditary succes- 
sion ; first Pippin of Landen and Arnulf, afterwards Grini- 
wald ; then Pippin of Heristal, grandson of Arnulf and of 



RECONSTRUCTION OF TEE EMPIRE. G7 

Pippin of Landen. Under the guidance of this family, 
which owes its name to Charlemagne, its most illustrious 
member, the nation, after a century and a half of civil wars, 
was to return to the path of foreign conquest. They were 
to re-establish the Frankish rule, to strengthen again the 
royal authority, and finally, to create a hew Western Em- 
pire. The period of two centuries during which this house 
was so prominent presents three phases. First appear the 
efforts of the first Carolingians to replace under the yoke of 
the Franks the tribes who had freed themselves, and to 
bring again under the authority of the prince the nobles, 
who had no longer any thought of being in subjection (687- 
768). Then come Charlemagne's conquests and attempts 
at organization (768-814). Under his successors may be 
seen the dismemberment of the Empire by the revolts of 
the tribes, the fresh destruction of the royal authority by 
the usurpations of the leucles, and finally, the complete fail- 
ure of the work attempted by the Carolingians (814-887) . 

Pippin of Heristal (687-714) . —After the victory of Tes- 
try, royalty was not suppressed, but the duke of the Franks 
established a king only in order to show to the assembled 
people, at long intervals, a prince of the blood of Clovis. 
These " rois faineants " are not of enough consequence to 
deserve individual mention. 

Pippin had two things to do : to reconstruct the Empire 
of the Franks, which was falling to pieces ; and to recon- 
struct the royal authority, which was already in ruins. The 
second task was more difficult than the first. But while 
flattering the nobles. Pippin re-established the old custom of 
popular assemblage in March (Campus Martivis) ; he thus 
gained, in the mass of freemen, a support against the aris- 
tocracy, and it was this assembly which he consulted each 
year on subjects of war and peace. He engaged in many 
wars and was always conqueror. His efforts to bring the 
Prisons under his sway were aided by the missionaries, who 
sought to win them to the faith of the G-ospel. 

Death of Pippin of Heristal (714). — Pippin died in 714. 
His eldest son had died before him, and his second son had 
been assassinated. Pippin made an infant grandson mayor of 
Neustria and Austrasia, under the giiardianship of the child's 
grandmother Plectrude. But those who had been restive 
under the strong hand of Pippin refused to obey a woman 
and a child. The iSTeustrians took a mayor of their own 



68 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE EMPIRE. 

clioosing, Raginfred, and invaded Anstrasia from the west, 
while the Prisons and Saxons attacked it on the east. The 
Austrasians, thus surrounded, took from the prison into 
which Plectrude had cast him a son of Pippin, Carl, called 
Charles Mart el. 

Carl, or Charles, called Charles Martel (715-741).— He 
was thirty years old; a true barbarian and rough soldier. 
At first he was unsuccessful. The Neustrians and Prisons 
entered Austrasia simultaneously and penetrated as far as 
Cologne. He withdrew into the impenetrable country of 
the Ardennes, then, emerging thence, surprised and routed 
the Neustrian army. Tlie following year, near Cambrai, the 
Neustrians sustained a bloody defeat (717). The Aquita- 
nians came to their assistance. Charles defeated their com- 
bined forces a second time near Soissons (719). He allowed 
the Neustrians to retain their phantom king, but governed 
under his name. By repeated expeditions against them, he 
compelled the Alemamii, the Bavarians, the Thuringians, 
and the Saxons to recognize the ancient supremacy of the 
Franks. 

Victory of Tours (732). — But his greatest glory was hav- 
ing saved France from the Moslem invasion to which Spain 
and Africa had just been subjected. The Arabs, masters of 
the Peninsula (711), had penetrated into Gaul, through Sep- 
timania, taken Narbonne, Carcassonne, and JSTimes, besieged 
Toulouse, and almost destroyed Bordeaux. They went far- 
ther still in Burgundy ; Axitun was sacked, and in 731 they 
burned the church of St. Hilary of Poitiers. The defeated 
duke of Aquitania, Eudo, determined to seek the assistance 
of the duke of the Franks ; and the representatives of the 
two great invasions, Germanic and Moslem, which had 
divided the Eoman Empire, met between Tours and Poitiers. 
The encounter was terrific. The existence of Christianity 
was at stake. Three hundred thousand Saracens, the old 
chroniclers, with their usual exaggeration, declare, fell by the 
sword. The rest fled, and of all their conquests in the 
Prankish territory the Arabs retained only Septimania. 

Conquest of Burgundy and Provence (733-739). — The Bur- 
gundians had refused to submit to the unworthy successors 
of Dagobert ; Charles turned his arms against them, con- 
quered the valley of the Rhone, and entered Septimania. 
In 739 he completed the subjection of Provence. In order 
to reward his soldiers, Charles distributed among them 



RECONSTRUCTION OF THE EMPIRE. 69 

estates which he took from the Church. Yet he was pre- 
paring to cross the Alps to defend the Pope, who had solic- 
ited his aid against the Lombards ; but his death prevented. 

Mayoralty of Pippin the Short (741-752). — Of the two 
elder sons of Charles Martel, one received Austrasia and 
the country beyond the Rhine ; the other, Pippin, had Neu- 
stria and Burgundy. After the death of Theoderic IV., in 
737, Charles Martel had left the throne vacant. Carloman 
did likewise. Pippin the Short proclaimed Childeric III. 

The dukes of the Bavarians, Aquitanians, and Alemanni, 
refused obedience to the new chieftains of the Franks. But 
the two brothers, being united, triumphed. Carloman, in 
747, shut himself up in the monastery of Monte Cassino. 
He had two sons. Pippin seized upon the inheritance of 
his brother, and, being master of the whole Empire, con- 
ceived the idea of putting an end to the strange condition 
of affairs which had existed since the battle of Testry. So 
much glory now attached to his house that he might with- 
out apprehension repeat the undertaking in which Grimwald 
had been so unsuccessful in the preceding century. The 
Merovingian king had but a shadow of royalty. With the 
exception of a pension for subsistence, his sole possession 
was one villa, whence he emerged once a year to attend the 
general assembly of the nation. 

Relations of the Carolingians with Rome. — Very little 
effort was necessary to shut up this useless and neglected 
royalty in a monastery. Pippin had the assent of the na- 
tion, but he wished also to have the appearance of right on 
his side. The Pope, threatened by the Lombards, needed 
foreign aid to save his independence. The pontiff had long 
held friendly relations with the chief of the Franks ; for, 
since the time of Gregory the Great, the Church of Rome 
had undertaken, with energy, the conversion of the heathen. 
England had been conquered by her missionaries, and then 
they undertook Germany. St. Columban and St. Gall 
brought Helvetia into subjection to the faith; others carried 
the Gospel into the valley of the Danube ; Willibrod carried 
it into Frisia; Winifred, into Saxony. The land of the 
Franks was the starting-point for all these brave mis- 
sionaries. The kings or dukes comprehended perfectly that 
the spiritual conquest of the Germanic countries paved the 
way for their temporal conquest. Consequently they sus- 
tained the missionaries. Winifred, or St. Boniface, Arch- 



70 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE EMPIRE. 

bishop of Mainz, was one of tlie councillors of Carloman, 
and the two princes showed a pious and intelligent zeal for 
the true interests of the Church. Pippin was thus natu- 
rally led to ask the Pope to bestow the title on him who 
possessed the power. His envoys consulting Pope Zacharias 
in 751, the Pope answered that he who held the authority 
should also have the title, and commanded that Pippin 
should be made king. 

Pippin becomes King (752). — Pippin was accordingly 
anointed king of the Pranks, by Boniface, and seated on the 
throne, according to the custom of the Pranks, in the city 
of Soissons. Childeric III. was consigned to a monastery, 
where he died three years after. The termination of this 
first dynasty of the Prench kings excited no regret, and 
left behind it no memories. Contemporaries take notice of 
it only to see in this evei-t a just chastisement for the scorn 
which the Merovingians had too often manifested for the 
Church. 



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72 WAES OF PIPPIN AND CHARLEMAGNE. 



CHAPTER XII. 

WARS OP PIPPIN AND CHARLEMAGNE. 
(753-814 A.D.) 

Expeditions of Pippin in Germany and in Italy (754-757) ; 
his Donation. — Thotigli Pippin had won ecclesiastical sanc- 
tion for his assumption of royalty, he hastened to justify it 
by services. He occupied himself but little with the country 
which is now called Germany. He made only two expedi- 
tions against the Saxons. All his attention and all his 
strength were turned towaids the southern countries, Italy, 
Aquitania, and Southern Gaul. 

In 753 Pope Stephen II. came in person to Prance to im- 
plore his protection against the Lombards : he bestowed 
upon him the title of Patrician of the Romans. Pippin had 
himself consecrated a second time by the pontiff, forced the 
passage of the Alps, and besieged the Lombard king in 
Pavia. Astolf promised to restore the lands taken from 
the Church of Eome, btit did not do so. Pippin reappeared 
in Italy the following year, caused Eavenna, with all the 
Exarchate, which belonged to the Greek Empire, to be sur- 
rendered to him, and bestowed them upon St. Peter. This 
donation was the origin of the temporal power of the popes 
(754-756). 

Conquest of Septimania and Aquitania (752-768) ; Death 
of Pippin. — The Goths of Septimania had revolted against 
the Arabs, and called the Pranks to assist them. Nimes, 
Agde, B^ziers, and Carcassonne opened their gates to them, 
but Narbonne resisted for seven years. When it surren- 
dered, in 759, the empire of the Franks extended to the 
eastern Pyrenees. Then Pippin summoned Duke Waifer 
of Aquitania to surrender to him the fugitive leudes of 
Austrasia, and restore the property stolen from the churches. 
Waifer refused. Pippin immediately crossed the Loire, 
and from that moment Aquitania was svibjected to a sys- 
tematic devastation. Each year the devastation extended 
farther. Waifer, Avith a handful of brave men, fell back 



WAES OF PIPPIN AND CHARLEMAGNE. 73 

continually, yet always figliting. He was finally overcome 
only by assassination (768). Tlie independence of Aqnitania 
perished with liim ; but its sense of liberty remained strong, 
its hatred of the Franks profound. 

Pippin died in Paris in 768, " and," says Eginhard, " his 
sons Carl and Carloman were made kings by the consent of 
the Franks." Under him the general assemblies were trans- 
ferred from the month of March to the month of May, and 
he held them very regularly each year, convoking the bish- 
ops as well as the nobles. 

Carl and Carloman (768-771). — The Empire remained 
divided only three years ; and those three years were em- 
ployed in accomplishing the work begun by Pippin in Aqui- 
tania. At the news of the death of Waifer, Hunald, his 
father, had again taken up arms. Being defeated, he was 
surrendered by the Vascons, escaped, and took refuge with 
the Lombards. Carloman had ill sustained his brother dur- 
ing the war, and the misunderstanding between the two 
princes seemed likely to produce civil discord, when Carlo- 
man died. He left sons. The Austrasians, having it in 
their power to choose between these children and a valiant 
prince who had already shown himself a worthy successor 
of Pippin, did not hesitate to proclaim the latter, Carl or 
Charles (Charlemagne), their king. 

Charlemagne Sole King (771). — Charlemagne (Carolus 
Magnus) reigned forty-four years. This long reign is nat- 
urally divided into two parts, conquests and administration. 
The result of the first was to extend the boundaries of the 
Empire eastward as far as the Elbe, the Theiss, and the 
Bosna, southward as far as the Garigliano in Italy, and 
the Ebro in Spain. The state of Pippin was doubled. For 
the incentives to these conquests we need not imagine any 
other than the ordinary motives, ambition and love of glory. 
There was no invasion to be feared. The Arabs were divided, 
the Avars weakened, and the Saxons powerless to make 
war beyond the borders of their forests and their marshes. 

Conquests in Italy (773-774). — The sons of Carloman 
had taken refuge with Desiderius, king of the Lombards, 
who had already given an asylum to Hunald. Charlemagne 
had recently outraged Desiderius by sending back to him 
his daughter, to whom he had been married a year. Deside- 
rius, instigated by resentment and by the advice of Hunald, 
desired the Pope to consecrate as kings the two sons of 



74 WARS OF PIPPIN AND CHARLEMAGNE. 

Carloir.an. Adrian sent word of this to Charlemagne, who 
undertook an expedition beyond the Alps. The cities of 
Pavia and Verona alone resisted. Charles left an army in 
front of the two, went to Rome to receive the title of Patri- 
cian, with the oath of allegiance on the part of the Komans, 
and to confirm Pippin's donation to the Pope. Pavia sur- 
rendered. Desiderius and his children were shut np in a 
monastery, and Charles assumed the title of King of Italy 
(774). The Lombards retained all their possessions in the 
southern part of the Peninsula. The Prankish domination 
ended at the Garigliano ; the dukes of Benevento were only 
nominally tributary. 

Saxon War (772-803) . — This was a difficult and perilous 
war ; for the Saxons, a brave and energetic race, heroically 
defended their liberty. Religion was the pretext for the 
war. The Saxons burned a church and threatened to kill 
the missionaries. Charlemagne immediately entered their 
country, devastated it with fire and sword, took the castle 
of Eresburg, and cast down the idol Irminsul. In 774, while 
Charlemagne was in Italy, the Saxons tried to burn another 
church ; he returned and began a war of extermination, the 
principal events of which were several bloody victories, the 
massacre of 4500 Saxons at Verden, the removal of a portion 
of the tribe into other provinces, and the forced conversion 
of the inhabitants. The hero of the resisting army, Witi- 
kind, continued to fight till 785 ; he then surrendered and 
was baptized at Attigny. 

In 787 Charles promulgated, for the organization of Sax- 
ony, a capitulary of extreme severity, wherein the penalty 
of death was prescribed even for the smallest infractions 
of the ordinances of the Church. These means, although 
atrocious, succeeded. Saxony came from his hands subdued 
and Christianized, divided into eight bishoprics, and covered 
with new cities and abbeys, which were radiating centres of 
civilization. 

War between the Elbe and the Oder (789). — Conquerors 
are obliged to extend their conquests incessantly. Charle- 
magne rendered the Wiltzi tributary (789), crossed the 
Weser and the Elbe, penetrated as far as the Oder, and at 
the Eider closed the entrance to Germany against the Danes. 
His armies also penetrated into Bohemia. 

War against the Avars (781-796) . — Tassilo, duke of the 
Bavarians, submitted unwillingly to the Prankish domina- 



WARS OF PIPPIN AND CHARLEMAGNE. 75 

tion. In 786 a vast couspiracy was formed. Tassilo, aided 
by the Avars of Pannonia, was to attack Aiistrasia, wliile tlie 
Greeks, in conjtinction with the Duke of Benevento, threw 
themselves upon Italy. Charlemagne anticipated the danger 
by skilful and energetic measiires. Tassilo was surrounded 
by three armies, and, with his son, consigned to a monastery ; 
his duchy of Bavaria was absorbed. The Italian conspirators 
did not have time to act. The Avars arrived too late. They 
attacked Friuli and Bavaria at the same time (788). Driven 
back into Pannonia, they were followed thither by the 
Franks. This war was only ended, in 798, by the capture 
of the ring or camp of the Avars, where the Franks found 
enormous treasures. The struggle had been fatal to the 
Avars. A part of their country formed the Eastern March, 
from which Austria was evolved, as Prussia has been from 
the Saxon March. 

Spanish War (778-812). — A Saracen emir, hostile to the 
caliph of Cordova, offered to put the Franks in possession 
of the cities which he held south of the Pyrenees. Charles 
accepted, and, with a numerous army, traversed Gascony, 
whose duke. Lupus, was compelled to take the oath of 
allegiance to him. He captured Pampeluna and Saragossa. 
But, his allies giving him but little assistance, he returned 
to France through the passes of the Pyrenees. The army 
was marching through the valley of Eoncesvalles, when the 
Basques, who were ambushed in the woods, made a dash 
upon the rear-guard, throwing them into disorder, and killing 
several counts. Among them was Roland, commander of the 
Marches of Brittany, a hero celebrated in mediaeval legend. 

The Franks made six other expeditions beyond the Pyr- 
enees. They were conducted by the sons of Charlemagne, and 
resulted in the creation of the Spanish March, or county of 
Barcelona, and the March of Gascony, which afterwards be- 
came the kingdom of Navarre. The Empire extended nearly 
to the Ebro. A fleet sent against Corsica, Sardinia, and the Ba- 
learic Isles, drove away from them the Saracen pirates (799). 

Charlemagne Emperor of the West (800). — By the year 
800 Charlemagne found himself master of France, Germany, 
three-fourths of Italy, and a part of Spain ; he had increased 
the country left him by his father by more than one-third. 
These vast possessions were no longer a kingdom, but an 
empire. He believed he had done enough to authorize him 
in seating himself on the throne of the West. 



76 WAB8 OF PIPPIN AND CHARLEMAGNE. 

About tlie middle of the year 800 Charlemagne went to 
Italy, heard and dismissed accusations against the Pope, 
and received the keys of the Holy Sepulchre, sent by the 
patriarch of Jerusalem. '' On the sacred day of the birth 
of the Lord," says Eginhard, " while the king was praying 
before the altar of the blessed Apostle Peter, the Pope 
placed a crown upon his head, and all the Eoman people 
cried out, ' Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, 
crowned by God, great and pacific emperor of the Eomans ! ' " 

This ceremony was a great event. The title of Emperor 
of the West, which had been buried under the ruins wrought 
by the barbarians, was drawn forth by the pontiff of Eome, 
and held up to the view of the scattered and hostile nations 
as an ensign around which they might rally. A new right 
was created for those who should inherit this crown, — the 
right to command the Italian, German, and Prench nations, 
who were thus united under the authority of the Prankish 
emperor. 

Another person acquired at this time an important preroga- 
tive. In crowning Charlemagne, Pope Leo III. had merely 
performed a religious ceremony. His successors exalted 
this to a political right, and the pontiffs considered them- 
selves the dispensers of crowns. During all the Middle 
Ages the imperial consecration could only be obtained in 
Eome itself, and at the hands of the Holy Pather. More 
than one war was the result of this new right. 

Results of the Wars of Charlemagne. — All that he at- 
tempted beyond the Pyrenees miscarried. It would have 
been better if he had thoroughly subdued the Bretons, so as 
to cause them to adopt more rapidly the Prench nationality 
and mode of life, instead of contenting himself with a pre- 
carious submission. The conquest of the kingdom of the 
Lombards profited neither Italy nor Prance ; the Pope alone 
derived any benefit from it. The country for which those 
long wars had the most beneficial results was that which 
suffered most from them, Germany. Before the time of 
Charlemagne, Germany was still an unformed chaos of 
tribes, — some Pagan, some Christian, all barbarian, hostile 
and disunited. After him there was a German people, and 
a German kingdom was soon to follow. 

Appearance of the Northmen. — Incited by the hope of 
plunder and by dissensions at home, the Northmen set sail, 
and made their piratical expeditions all along the coast. 



WABS OF PIPPIN AND CHARLEMAGNE. 77 

They are said to have penetrated into the Mediterranean, 
even during the lifetime of the Emperor, and he was forced 
to take defensive measures against them; two fleets were 
assembled at Boulogne, and near Ghent, two others on the 
Garonne and the Ehone. 



78 GOVERNMENT OF CHARLEMAGNE. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

GOVERNMENT OF CHARLEMAGNE. 

Extent of the Empire. — The boundaries of the Empire 
were on the north and east the Ocean, from the mouth of 
the Elbe to the Spanish shore of the Bay of Biscay, with 
the exception of the Armorican peninsu.la, which was only 
tributary ; on the south the Pyrenees, and in Spain the lower 
course of the Ebro ; in Italy, the Garigliano and the Pes- 
cara, excluding Gaeta and Venice, v/hich acknowledged the 
sovereignty of Constantinople ; and finally, most of the 
coast of Illyria. On the east the boundary was marked in 
Illyria by the Bosna and the Save; in Germany, by the 
Theiss, the mountains to the east of Bohemia, the Saale, 
and the Elbe. The country between the Elbe and the Eider 
was subject to Charlemagne. 

But beyond these frontiers were tribes half subjugated, 
half independent ; the Navarrese in the Pyrenees, the people 
of the duke of Benevento in Italy, the Bretons and Bohemi- 
ans, and, between the Elbe and the Oder, the Obotriti and 
the Wiltzi. To these may be added the Balearic Isles, Cor- 
sica, perhaps also Sardinia, which were disputed possessions. 

Restoration of Royal Authority. — The first Carolingians 
had violently seized upon the authority which the Merovin- 
gians had allowed to fall from their enfeebled hands. They 
had driven usurping officers from the counties, dispossessed 
a number of the bishops, reconquered Gaul, and re-established, 
while at the same time increasing the extent of, the Prank- 
ish nation, which then seemed about to perish. Disturb- 
ances were inevitable during the reconstruction of public 
authority and of the Empire. Under Pippin the Short and 
Carloman, regular government had commenced. These two 
princes had become reconciled with the Church, by making 
amends for some of the violent measures of their father, but 
at the same time maintained their recovered authority. With 
this new line of Germans reappeared some German customs. 

The Emperor. — The court of Charlemagne greatly resem- 



GOVERNMENT OF CHARLEMAGNE. 79 

bled that of the Merovingians, but it was more numerous 
and more capable ; during the last years of his reign, it was 
held regularly at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), the favorite resi- 
dence of Charlemagne. About him were his royal officers, a 
number of bishops, counts, dukes, of missi dominici, forming 
when assembled that floating council which was seen around 
the Merovingians, a council which, if necessary, could be- 
come a tribunal. To render justice was one of the principal 
occupations of the sovereign at the palace of Aix-la-Chapelle ; 
litigants flocked thither. 

This prince must not be thought of as a solemn personage, 
clothed in purple, a crown on hisk head and a sceptre in his 
hand. He usually wore tight-fitting garments, of German 
fashion, and in the country the large cloak of the Frisons. 
He lived familiarly with his own family, was very indulgent 
to his daughters, who followed him everywhere, to the chase 
and even to battle. He took no rest during the day except 
during the hours appointed for religious services. At church 
he himself sang and directed the choir. 

General Assemblies. — '^ It was the custom of those times," 
says Hincmar, archbishop of Eheims, " to hold two assem- 
blies, one in the spring and one in the autumn. At both 
of them were submitted to the nobles the articles called 
cajntula, which the king himself had drawn up under the 
inspiration of God, or the necessity of which had been mani- 
fested during the intervals between meetings. After having 
received these communications, they deliberated upon them 
two or three days at most, according to the importance of 
the subjects. The results of these deliberations were laid 
before the great prince, who then, with the wisdom which 
he had received from God, adopted a resolution, to which 
all submitted. 

"While these affairs were thus discussed without the 
king's presence, that prince himself was in the midst of the 
multitude who gathered at the general assembly, occupied 
in receiving presents, saluting the most distinguished men, 
whether ecclesiastics or laymen, conversing with those whom 
he saw rarely, showing an affectionate interest in the aged, 
or joining in the gayety of the young. 

" If the weather was fine, all this took place in the open 
air, if not, in several different buildings. The places ^ap- 
pointed for these assemblies of the nobles were divided into 
two parts so that the bishops, the abbots and the clergy of 



80 GOVERNMENT OF CHARLEMAGNE. 

distinguislied rank, could meet witliout mixing with the lay- 
men. Also the counts and other distinguished officers of 
the State withdrew in the morning from the rest of the mul- 
titude. Then both repaired to the hall which had been 
assigned to them. They could sit together or apart, accord- 
ing to the nature of the affairs upon which they were delib- 
erating. The second occupation of the king was to ask each 
one what he had to report concerning that part of the king- 
dom from whence he had come." 

These assemblies then no longer resembled the ancient 
Champs de Mars of the Franks, where each freeman took 
part in the deliberation, but the laws bore, as a sign of royal 
sanction, "And all this has been approved.by the people." 
In reality, the Emperor made the laws ; he consulted the 
nobles, but the initiative and the decision came from him. 

The Army ; Taxation. — For each expedition the Emperor 
convoked the freemen wno owed military service. The pos- 
session of a certain number of acres of land created the 
obligation to furnish men for the army, fully equipped, 
mounted, and furnished with all necessary provisions. If, 
in order to reach the required number of acres, it was neces- 
sary that several landowners should unite, one of them 
became the soldier, the others furnished the equipment, the 
arms, and provisions. 

Under the Carolingians, there were no more public taxes. 
The resources of the king were the revenues of his immense 
domains, the gratuitous gifts of the freemen, and the trib- 
ute of money or produce from conquered countries. The 
State no longer expended money for the public works any 
more than for the army, — roads and bridges being kept in 
order by the landowners. The administration cost nothing, 
because the officers lived, as did the counts, from the revenue 
of their offices. So Charlemagne had nothing to ask of the 
people, and could govern as an absolute king. If he had to 
make gifts he took from the estates of the church precaria 
or benefices, which he assigned to his followers as rewards 
or favors. 

Government; the Count; the Centenarins. — The Empire 
was divided into counties, which were of about the size of 
the Roman cities. The counts, the ordinary and resident 
agents of the general administration, combined all civil, 
judicial, and military functions. Along with the count, 
under the first Carolingians, there was the centenarius (hun- 



GOVERNMENT OF CHARLEMAGNE. 81 

dred-nian) or vicar, who ruled over a district, in whicli he 
held three courts each year, assisted by the scabini or royal 
judges, and the freemen of the country. He judged all 
causes except certain graver ones, which could only be car- 
ried before the court of the count. 

The Missi Dominici, etc. — The missi dominici, usually a 
count and a bishop, went over the counties committed to 
their charge four ti-mes a year, so as to be able to keep the 
Emperor informed as to the wishes of the people. They 
heard the complaints of his subjects, reformed abuses, and 
received appeals from sentences rendered by the counts. 
This institution, known under the Merovingians, became 
under Charlemagne a regular institution, and would have 
saved the French royalty if it had been properly maintained. 

Charlemagne never placed more than one county in charge 
of the same person, except on the frontiers, in the Marches, 
where it was a military necessity. He instituted no duchies, 
wliich rendered their possessor too powerful. 

The Church. — The Church was closely united to the 
State. Charlemagne served it in all his wars. He pro- 
claimed himself the devoted defender of Holy Church. He 
presided over as many councils as assemblies ; in his capitu- 
laries he recommends the observance of the laws of God 
and the Church, and excuses himself for not being able to 
direct each one of his subjects in the path of salvation. 
Everywhere he employs bishops in the government. He 
commits to them the supervision of the counts. They were, 
in his eyes, public officers of a high rank. He appointed 
them himself, and chose them often from among the clergy 
of his chapel. This close union of Church and State was to 
cause danger in the future, but while the glorious monarch 
was living, the government was strengthened by this close 
union of the two powers. 

Aristocracy. — Charlemagne, powerful as he was, could 
not stop the progress of society, for no man has sufficient 
strength for that. Consequently we are forced to observe 
the persistence and even the progress of that aristocracy 
which was to stifle the Carolingian monarchy, after having 
stifled that of the Merovingians. 

Beneficiaries. — The Merovingians had granted lands with- 
out any positive conditions. The ■ obligation of military 
service to the donors appears first tinder the Carolingians. 
Thus was created that armed clientage of which they had 



82 GOVERNMENT OF CHARLEMAGNE. 

need ; but the result was that the beneficiaries lost the idea 
of public obligation, and regarded the king, not as their 
king, but as their lord. The nobles gave benefices also, and 
their beneficiaries followed the example of those of the 
king; so that the small private group, of which the lord 
was the chief, became more strongly organized. 

Vassals. — The number of the vassals of the king or of 
the nobles was very great even in the time of Charlemagne. 
The simple freemen, those who owed service only to the 
king, disappeared. Charlemagne made vain efforts to retain 
them. Sometimes the freeman, feeling the need of protec- 
tion, takes refuge of his own accord in the condition of 
vassal ; sometimes he is compelled to enter into it by those 
more powerful than himself. Charlemagne, however, recog- 
nized the legal existence of vassals. He determined the 
conditions under which the vassal could leave his lord; 
which shows that, excepi in such cases, the lord had a right 
to claim and to pursue the fugitive. 

Imnmiiities. — Immunities continued to be distributed, es- 
pecially to the Church. Special jurisdictions were formed 
everywhere, as a consequence of the immunity, which freed 
a territory from public jurisdiction. Charlemagne recognized 
the legal existence of these particular jurisdictions, which 
were soon to become quasi sovereignties. Thus were devel- 
oped those customs and institutions which were to result in 
ruining central authority and constituting feudalism. 

Conclusion. — There is, then, in the government of Char- 
lemagne a great visible strength and a hidden weakness. 
The strength of it is due both to historical circumstances 
and to the personal character of Charlemagne. The circum- 
stances are, the perpetual wars which demanded the activ- 
ity of the whole people, and the very newness of the Empire 
founded by the Carolingians. With regard to the personal 
character of Charlemagne, his energy and his strict sense 
of duty are well known ; he had also a clear perception of 
what was possible iinder the conditions of society which 
then existed. The causes for the weakening of the royal 
authority, on the contrary, were permanent, because they 
were inherent in the constitution of society. 

Capitularies. — There are sixty-five of these capitularies, 
comprising 1151 articles. The diversity of the affairs of 
which they treat proves the intense energy of the prince, 
and his ardent desire to bring order into the state. They 



GOVERNMENT OF CHARLEMAGNE. 83 

show ]io"w everything was brought under his personal super- 
vision. While presiding over councils and discussing with 
bishops, he regulated also the smallest details of the man- 
agement of his farms. He opposed the usurpation of the 
estates of the royal domain, and at the same time, warned 
the people by his advice and counsel against impostors and 
forgers. He tried to exterminate beggary, and imposed 
upon each parishioner an obligation to give tithes to his 
church, dividing them into three parts : the first for the 
maintenance and ornamentation of the church ; the second, 
for the use of the poor and of strangers ; the third alone for 
the priests. The introduction of the Gregorian chant into 
the churches was one of his great achievements ; another 
was the reformation of the monasteries, which was carried 
out by St. Benedict of Aniane. He enlarged the jurisdic- 
tion of the Church so as to free it from the royal jurisdic- 
tion, and attempted to regulate weights and measures ; he 
fixed a maximum of prices, and tried to repress theft. 

Public Works and Schools. — The bishops' sees which he 
established in Saxony and Pannonia each gave birth to an 
important city. He began a canal between the Rhine and the 
Danube ; he constructed a bridge at Mainz, a basilica at Aix- 
la-Chapelle, two palaces at Nymwegen and Ingelheim. He 
restored a number of churches, and exacted that the priests 
should be not only pious but learned and charitable, and 
that they should live in a manner suitable to their profes- 
sion. He established schools in the bishoprics, in the mon- 
asteries, even in his palace. He assisted in the lessons, 
rewarded the most diligent, and reproved the sons of the 
nobles when they allowed the sons of the poor to surpass 
them. 

First Literary Renaissance. — He himself studied dili- 
gently. Kot limiting himself to the study of his mother 
tongue, he desired to know foreign languages, and learned 
Latin so thoroughly that he could speak it as well as his 
own. He understood Greek better than he could speak it. 
He was so fluent in conversation that he appeared to be 
fond of talking. Passionately fond of the liberal arts, he 
respected the men who excelled in them, and loaded them 
with honors. Under Alcuin, the most learned man of his 
age, Charlemagne devoted much time to the study of 
rhetoric, dialectics, and astronomy. He even tried to write, 
but had little success in this study, having begun too late. 



84 GOVERNMENT OF CHARLEMAGNE. 

He ordered that tlie customs of the nations comprised in 
his Empire should be written out ; also the barbarian poems 
which celebrated the exploits of the ancient chiefs, and 
thus preserved them for posterity. He also began a gram- 
mar of the national language. 

Alcuin and Eginhard. — France was at that time behind 
the other countries of Euroj)e. Charlemagne was obliged 
to seek beyond his own provinces for men capable of carry- 
ing out his ideas. All the schoolmasters of the palace 
school were foreigners ; prominent as their leader was the 
Anglo-Saxon Alcuin, whom Charlemagne with difficulty 
retained in his service. A Frank, however, eclipsed them 
all, Eginhard, the Emperor's secretary. His Life of Charle- 
magne is not only a precious collection of authentic facts, 
but a book of history, a truly literary composition. It is 
known that Charlemagne himself had a seat in this academy. 
The discussions which took place there show that science 
among them was in its extreme infancy. But we need not 
value less highly on that account the efforts of these men 
to emerge from barbarism. Charlemagne was, in fact, fos- 
tering a literary renaissance, which doubtless developed 
slowly, but which thenceforth never ceased. 

Foreign Relations of Charlemagne. — Thus the successors of 
the rots faineants could give a good account of their usurpa- 
tion. The Empire of the Franks, which was falling to ruin, 
had been restored and enlarged; and governmental authority, 
which was collapsing, had been recovered and strengthened. 
It was not an empty title which Charlemagne had assumed 
at Kome : he was truly the Emperor of the West. Eginhard 
shows him to us in his palace of Aix-la-Chapelle, continually 
surrounded by kings and ambassadors from countries even 
the most distant. The brilliant and formidable master of 
Western Asia, the Caliph Haroun-al-Easchid, sought his 
friendship, and sent him presents. The Emperor of Con- 
stantinople made a treaty with him. He was, if we may 
believe the account of a writer of Byzantium, even on the 
point of marrying the Empress Irene, and thus uniting the 
two Empires. 

Death of Charlemagne. — The great Emperor died on the 
28th of January, 814. His reign was one continual and 
glorious effort to fuse together the barbarian world and the 
remnant of Roman civilization, to reduce to order the chaos 
born of invasions, and to found a well-regulated society, in 



GOVERNMENT OF CHARLEMAGNE. 85 

■which the authority of the Emperor, co-operating with that 
of the Pope, shoukl maintain order in the Church as well as 
in the State, — a very difficult problem, which Charlemagne 
was able to solve, but all the difficulties of which reappeared 
after his time. The work of Charlemagne, it is true, did 
not last ; the causes of its failure will be seen presently. 
Yet, if this chain of nations which he wished to form was 
broken, his grand image soared above the feudal ages like 
the genius of order, unceasingly inviting the people to 
emerge from chaos, to seek union and peace under a strong 
and glorious chieftain. 



DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE 
BY THE REVOLT OF THE NATIONS, 

(814-843 A.D.) 

Louis the Pious (814-840). — Charlemagne had indeed 
founded a vast empire ; but he conkl not give to these na- 
tions, differing in origin, languages, and customs, the pos- 
session of common interests and sentiments, or even a desire 
to remain united in one great political family. When 
Charlemagne disappeared, all fell apart. The personal am- 
bitions of the princes of the imperial family contributed to . 
the dismemberment of the nations ; those of the great land- 
owners and imperial officers favored the parcelling out of 
the fiefs. 

Charlemagne had made his three sons kings : Louis the 
Pious, of the Aquitanians ; Pippin, of the Italians ; Charles, 
of theG-ermans. The last two died before their father, and 
this division was annulled; afterwards, Charlemagne be- 
stowed Italy upon Bernard, son of Pippin. But when his 
strong hand was witlidrawn the edifice- fell. The nations 
desired kings ; the kings longed for independence. In order 
to restrain these ambitious desires, a strong will was needed; 
and the weakest of men succeeded to this weighty heritage. 
This heir, Louis, was pious and honest ; but his piety was 
that of a monk, and not of a king ; and his justice degen- 
erated either into weakness or into cruelty. He began by 
acts of reparation which involved an imprudent abandon- 
ment of the rights of the Empire, and allowed the Pomans 
to institute a new Pope without waiting for the imperial 
confirmation. At the same time, Louis made great reforms 
in the court, and severely punished criminals. He offended 
the great landowners by requiring that all freemen should 
take the oath of allegiance directly to him. To allay dis- 
content he was lavish of benefices, bestowing them as per- 
petual possessions. As there had been no public taxation 
for two centuries, the prince had no revenues other than 



DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE. 87 

those accruing from his own domains, and in alienating liis 
domains, he alienated his revenues. 

In 817 the monastic order was subjected universally to 
the rule of St. Benedict, and the Emperor made a division 
of his estates among his sons. Pippin received Aquitania ; 
Louis, Bavaria; Lothair, the eldest, was associated with 
him in the Empire. But they were not to make war, con- 
clude a treaty, or cede a city, without his authority. 

Revolt and Death of Bernard (817-818). — Bernard, whom 
his grandfather had made king of Italy, pretended to consider 
himself wronged by this division. The people and cities 
of Italy, eager for independence, joined him in resenting it. 
The Emperor collected troops from every direction, and 
came as far as Chdlons with a numerous army, Bernard, 
feeling himself too weak to contend against such forces, sur- 
rendered to the Emperor, together with the lords of his 
kingdom and a great number of clergymen and laity. The 
Emperor relieved Bernard and his accomplices from the sen- 
tence of death, but had their eyes put out. Bernard died a 
few days after. The rest of the guilty were banished or 
degraded. 

Repression of Insurrection. — The Frankish people were 
not yet willing that their empire should be dissolved, and 
they supx^orted with enthusiasm all the wars intended to 
assure its preservation. The death of Charlemagne had 
been a signal for armed outbreaks on the part of the tribu- 
tary and hostile nations. The Slavs of the Elbe had invaded 
Saxony ; the Avars of Pannonia were in revolt ; the Bretons 
came from their peninsula ; the Basques destroyed a Frank- 
ish army ; and the Arabs of Spain invaded Septimania ; 
while the Saracens ravaged the southern coasts, and the 
Nortlnnen the northern and western. All were repulsed or 
subdued, and Louis seemed, for a while, to wield the imperial 
sceptre as worthily as his father. 

Public Penance of Louis (822) . — But soon the dishearten- 
ing weakness of this prince became apx)arent to all. In 822, 
in the presence of a general assembly of ecclesiastics and 
nobles at Attigny, he made a public confession of his faults, 
especially in the matter of Bernard, and did penance for all. 
However creditable his penitence, Louis went out of the 
palace of Attigny belittled and degraded, because he had 
received his absolution from a political body, whose author- 
ity rivalled his own. 



88 DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE. 

Deposition and Restoration of Louis (830). — In 823, 
Judith, the second wife of the Emperor, gave birth to a son 
who was named Charles. The mother desired that this 
child should also have a kingdom, and the father, cancelling 
the partition of 816, made another in 829, by which Aleman- 
nia was given to him. The elder sons immediately stirred 
up the people ; the Emperor fell into the hands of the rebels. 
They compelled the Empress to take the veil and shut their 
father up in a monastery. But the monks organized another 
conspiracy with Louis and Pippin, to whom the supremacy 
of Lothair was already odious, and the assembly of Nym- 
wegen restored Louis to his authority (830), 

Second Deposition of Louis (833) . — Though restored to 
the throne he knew no better how to govern. He deposed 
Pippin and gave his kingdom of Aquitania to the son of 
Judith ; the other sons saw in this a menace to themselves ; 
they again joined forces and attacked their father with three 
armies near Colmar in Alsace. The Pope was with them. 
Louis had a considerable munber of troops and a battle 
seemed imminent. But his army was corrupted; and the 
Emperor gave himself up, with Judith and Charles into 
their hands. On account of this great treason the place was 
called Liigenfeld, the field of Lies. The conquerors insulted 
the old age and dignity of their father by compelling him 
to read publicly a long account of his errors, after which 
the bishops came solemnly and took off his military baldric 
and gave him the dress of a penitent. 

Second Restoration of Louis (834); his Death (840). — 
The humiliation and pious resignation of Louis, the revolt- 
ing cruelty of his sons, excited the compassion of the people. 
The brothers moreover came to no better understandjng 
than before. Louis and Pippin would not agree to obey 
Lothair, who proposed to maintain the unity of the imperial 
command. They then drew forth Louis from the monastery 
in which Lothair kept him, and restored him to power (834) . 

The Emperor, released from the cloister, committed the 
same errors. In 835 he gave Burgundy, Provence and Sep- 
timania to Charles. Pippin king of Aquitania, dying the 
following year, his children were robbed and Charles received 
this kingdom also. Then Louis the German and Lothair, 
being reduced the one to Bavaria and the other to Italy, 
again took up arms. The Emperor made a treaty with 
Lothair (839). He gave up to him all the provinces east 



DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE. 89 

of the Meuse, tlie Jura and the Rhone, with the title of 
Emperor ; the western provinces were the portion of the son 
of Judith, Louis the German retaining only Bavaria. The 
latter cried out against this unjust division and the old 
Emperor spent his last days in this impious war (d. 840). 

Battle of Fontanetum (841) and Treaty of Verdun (843). 
Since the death of Charlemagne the Empire had been in a 
constant state of agitation. Each prince wished to have a 
kingdom and each grand division of the Empire wished to 
have a king of its own, so as to form a separate state. 
Finally the question received its decision at the solemn bat- 
tle of Fontanetum near Auxerre. All the tribes of Germany 
under Louis the German, and the Neustrians, the Burgun- 
dians, and the Provencals under Charles the Bald, sought 
to overthrow the imperial system. The Austrasian Franks 
and the Italians fought to maintain it. The Emperor Lo- 
thair, the eldest son of Louis the Pious, was at their head 
(841). Both sides prepared themselves for conflict with a 
sort of religious enthusiasm, which proved that the people 
had come to this supreme contest as to a judgment of God. 
After a severe struggle, Lothair was compelled to retreat. 
But Louis and Charles, in obedience to sentiments foreign 
to earlier ages of Prankish history, refused to push to ex- 
tremities their war against their brother. 

The battle of Fontanetum was thus indecisive, and the 
war continued. Louis and Charles met at Strassburg and 
swore alliance in the presence of their soldiers, one in the 
Tudesque or German tongue, the other in Romance or French. 
The Strassburg oaths are the earliest monument of the 
French language, formed by the combination of the three 
idioms which were spoken in Gaul, the Latin and, to a much 
less extent, the German and Celtic. 

Lothair determined to treat. A hundred and ten com- 
missioners went through all the provinces and drew up a list 
so that an equal division could be made. It was accom- 
plished at Verdun (843). The three principal nations of 
the Empire, the Germans, Gallo-Franks, and Italians, sepa- 
rated forever, the first under Louis, the second under Charles, 
the third under Lothair, who retained, with Eome, the title 
of Emperor, and received also a long and narrow strip of 
territory which extended from the Meuse to the Phine, and 
from the Sadne and the Rhone to the Alps (Belgium, Loth- 
aringia or Lorraine, the county of Burgundy, Dauphiny and 



90 DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE. 

Provence). This treaty reduced Gaul one-tliird and took 
away for the first time her boundary of the K.hine and the 
Alps, never yet completely and permanently recovered. 
Charles the Bald, who signed this fatal convention, thus 
became, in truth, the first king of modern France, as Louis 
the German was the first king of Germany ; Lothair con- 
tinued the kingdom of Italy. 

Thus the rending of the unity of Christian Europe was 
accomplished. 



DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM. 91 



CHAPTER XV. 

DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE BY THE 
USURPATIONS OF THE LEUDES. 

(843-887 A.D.) 

Charles the Bald (843-877). — Thus far we have been 
writing the history of the Gauls, the Gallo-Ronians, and the 
Franks ; with the treaty of Verdun we begin the historj'- of 
the French. France, at this period, had received all the 
races of which her population is composed, with the excep- 
tion of the JSTorthmen, and all the elements, — Celtic, Koman, 
Christian, and German, — from the combination of which 
her civilization has resulted. The fusion was even then 
sufficiently advanced to leave no distinction between the 
Gallo-Romans and the Franks. All had the same manners 
and customs and almost the same language ; law was ceas- 
ing to be personal, and becoming local; the customs took 
the place of either the Roman or the barbarian code ; there 
were scarcely any slaves, and few freemen, and it would not 
be long before there were only serfs and lords. The Empire 
of Charlemagne was divided into three kingdoms; France 
was about to be broken up into feudal principalities, some of 
which aspired to become wholly independent states. 

The son of Judith and Louis the Pious, Charles the Bald, 
king of France from the year 840, was only a man of vulgar 
ambitions, who accomplished little in his long reign of thirty- 
seven years. His embarrassments, it is true, were great. In 
the first years of his reign the Count of Jacca assumed the 
sovereignty of Navarre, and the Northmen burned Rouen 
and pillaged Nantes, Saintes, and Bordeaux ; the Aquitanians 
revolted, desiring to have a national king; the Bretons 
made Nomenoe their king ; Septimania took Bernard for her 
chief. The Saracens and the Greek pirates ravaged the 
south, while the Northmen devastated the north and west, 
and the Hungarians, successors of the Huns and Avars, 
came in from the east. 

The Northmen. — Those much dreaded pirates, the North- 



92 DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM. 

men, were men wliom hunger, thirst for pillage, and love 
of adventure drove out every year from the sterile regions 
of Norway, Sweden, and Demnark. In three days an east 
wind would bear their two-sailed vessels to the mouth of 
the Seine. Each fleet was under command of a kuning, or 
king. He was king only on the sea and in time of battle ; 
but was everywhere followed with fidelity, and always 
obeyed with zeal, because he was always the one reputed to 
be the bravest of the brave. Equals under such a chief, 
the Danish pirates sailed gaily over the " swan-path," now 
coasting along the shore, and fighting their enemies on the 
straits, bays, and small anchorages, which gave them the 
name of vikings, or bay-men ; now darting off in pursuit of 
them across the ocean. The violent storms of the Northern 
seas dispersed and shattered their frail vessels ; but those 
who survived their shipwrecked companions had, in conse- 
quence, no less courage, and no more care ; they laughed at 
the winds and waves which had not been able to harm 
them. Often some of them, in the midst of the clash of 
arms, and at the sight of blood, were seized with a sort of 
"berserker" madness, which doubled their strength and 
rendered them insensible to wounds, as though they saw 
spread before their eyes the palace of their god Odin and 
the resplendent halls of Walhalla. Others affected, under 
torture, an indomitable energy, and sang, even in the midst 
of their tormentors, their own death-song. 

Religious fanaticism was added to warlike fanaticism ; 
these pirates loved to shed the blood of priests. Charle- 
magne had seen these terrible invaders at a distance ; under 
Louis the Pious they became bolder. A few established a 
colony, in 837, in the island of Walcheren, and sallied forth 
thence to levy contributions on the countries along the 
banks of the Meuse and the Waal. Erom the year 843 they 
came each year. They entered the estuaries of the rivers, 
and penetrated into the interior of the countries. A num- 
ber of cities, even among the most important ones, as Orleans 
and Paris, were taken and pillaged by them, and Charles 
was unable to defend them. Einally, it became their custom 
not to return to their own country during the winter. They 
established themselves on the islands in the rivers ; thither 
they carried their booty, and thence they set out upon new 
expeditions. 

Edict of Mersen (847) ; Hasting. — The fifty-three expedi- 



DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM. 93 

tions of Charlemagne liad. worn out the Prankish race, and 
his conquests had spread it over three kingdoms. The dis- 
sensions among tlie sons of Louis the Pious had completed 
the work. The freemen had almost all lost, or for the sake 
of protection renounced, their independence. The edict of 
Mersen declares, "Each freeman may choose a lord, either 
the king or one of his vassals ; and no vassal of the king 
shall be obliged to follow him to war, except against a 
foreign enemy." Thus the king in civil war was powerless ; 
and as he could neither force the nobles to obey, nor protect 
the lower classes, the latter formed themselves into groups 
about the former. On all sides the national interest was 
made secondary to the personal. Patriotism being thus 
entirely absent, even small bands could ravage the country 
with impunity. Charles tried to send them back by giving 
them gold; this was the surest means of attracting them. 
The real Northmen were not very numerous. But many 
inhabitants of the country joined the heathen forces, and 
these renegades were most to be dreaded. They served as 
guides to the invaders, and showed even less respect and 
pity than the Northmen for the faith and the people whom 
they had deserted. Sometimes a few of the nobles allowed 
themselves to be bribed by the Northmen not to interfere 
with their proceedings, and thus secured a tithe of the 
pillage of France. 

The most formidable of these pirates was Hasting, who 
ravaged the banks of the Loire from 843 to 850, sacked 
Bordeaux and Saintes, threatened Tarbes, sailed around 
Spain, and, pillaging as he went, reached even the shores 
of Italy. He was attracted by the great name and the 
riches of the capital of the Christian world ; but he mistook 
Luna for Eome. A pretence of desiring baptism failing to 
open the gates. Hasting feigned death. His companions 
were allowed to bring his body into the city for Christian 
burial, when suddenly, in the cathedral, he rose from the 
bier and, with his friends, fell upon and massacred priests, 
soldiers, and inhabitants. 

Robert the Strong. — Charles the Bald had united part 
of the country between the Seine and the Loire under the 
command of Robert the Strong, ancestor of the Capetians, 
so as to oppose a more effectual resistance to the Northmen 
and the Bretons, a great number of the latter having made 
it their habit to join the pirates. Eobert twice conquered 



94 DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM. 

the Bretons and defeated a body of Northmen laden with 
booty. It was this valiant chieftain whom Hasting encoun- 
tered on his return from Italy. He had just sacked Le Mans, 
when Eobert and the duke of Aquitania attacked him near 
Angers. The heathens threw themselves into a church and 
barricaded themselves there ; then, suddenly sallying forth 
at night, surprised their assailants and slew both Eobert 
and the duke (866). Hasting, delivered from this formid- 
able adversary, went up the Loire and penetrated as far as 
Clermont-rerrand. No other means could be found to rid 
France of him than to bestow upon him the county of 
Chartres, in 882. 

Commencement of the Great Fiefs. — The Northmen were 
not the only embarrassment to Charles the Bald ; the Breton 
Nomenoe repelled all his attacks, and had himself crov/ned 
king. Eevolts occurred among the Aquitanians. Charles 
lost Aquitania for some time, recovered it and gave it to 
one of his sons. But the real masters of the country were 
the Count of Toulouse, who also ruled over Bouergue and 
Quercy, the Count of Angoul^me, the Duke of Gascony, the 
Marquis of Septimania, the Duke of Aquitania and Count 
of Poitiers, and the Count of Auvergne, who all founded 
hereditary houses. To the north of the Loire, Charles had 
even been obliged to constitute, for Robert the Strong, the 
duchy of France, and for others the county of Flanders and 
the powerful duchy of Burgundy. Yet Charles from time 
to time made efforts to retain in his service and in that of 
the state the class of freemen, as for instance in 863 by the 
edict of Pistes. 

Foreign Wars. Edict of Kiersy (877). — This prince, so 
weak at home, was especially anxious to be great abroad. 
At the death of the Emperor Lothair, in 855, his heritage 
had been divided among his three sons. The eldest received 
Italy, the second Lotharingia, the third Provence. The last 
lived only till the year 863, the king of Lotharingia till 869, 
and none of them left children. Charles the Bald tried 
after their death to get possession of their domains. He 
failed at first, in 863, but succeeded in 870, and divided 
Lorraine with his brother, Louis the German. At the death 
of the eldest brother, the Emperor Louis II., in 876, Charles 
again aspired to the imperial crown. He went to Rome to 
have it given him by the Pope, and, his brother, Louis the 
German, being dead, he undertook to add Germany to 



DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM. 95 

France. He was defeated on the ^ine ; Italy also escaped 
him. In order to secure the support of his vassals in this 
quarrel, he signed at Kiersy-sur-Oise a capitulary declaring 
that the sons of those of his counts who should follow him 
to Italy should succeed their fathers in the office of count. 
By such heredity of public functions royalty was despoiled 
of the powers which she had conferred. Charles died on 
this expedition at the foot of Mt. Cenis. 

louis the Stammerer (877-879); Louis III. and Carloman 
(879-^84) ; Charles the Fat (884-887) . — The son of Charles 
the Bald, Louis the Stammerer, succeeded him as king of 
France. To conciliate his nobles, he gave up to them some 
of the domains which still remained in possession of the 
crown, concessions which his two sons, Louis III, and Carlo- 
man, multiplied. These two princes reigned harmoniously, 
the one in Neustria, the other in Aquitania and Burgundy. 
The evils of the time continued, however, none the less to 
increase. Provence became a separate kingdom. Lorraine 
was abandoned to Germany. Two victories were gained 
over the Northmen, but did not prevent their robberies from 
immediately recommencing. The two kings were killed 
accidentally, Louis in 882, Carloman two years after. 

They left a brother, Charles the Simple ; but the nobles 
preferred Charles the Fat, then emperor of Germany. The 
whole heritage of Charlemagne was united under his con- 
trol. But this man who bore so many crowns could not 
even intimidate the Northmen. 

Siege of Paris (885-886) . — He had already ceded Frisia 
to one of their chiefs. Another, the famous RoUo, had just' 
taken Rouen and Pontoise, and killed the duke of Le Mans. 
At the approach of his countrymen, the new count of 
Chartres, the former pirate Hasting, hastened to join them, 
and all marched upon Paris, which they had already three 
times pillaged. But Paris had lately been fortified ; great 
towers covered the bridges which united the island of the 
city to the faubourgs on the two banks ; the Seine was thus 
closed to the seven hundred great barges which the North- 
men wished to row up to Burgundy, into which they had 
never gone. The inhabitants, encouraged by their bishop, 
Gozlin, and their Count, Eudes, son of Robert the Strong, 
resisted for a year. The Northmen established themselves 
in an entrenched camp. Deserters taught them all that was 
then known of the military science of the Romans. The 



96 DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM. 

siege was pushed by every possible means. The inhabitants 
defended tlieir city with the most desperate bravery. Noth- 
ing was talked of over the whole country, but the courage 
of the Parisians, and some were emboldened to emulate 
them. Several bands of pirates who had quitted the siege 
were defeated. Duke Henry, the counsellor of Emperor 
Charles, even succeeded in throwing some reinforcements 
into the place; but the heathen maintained the blockade. 
The suffering in the city became extreme; many persons 
died. The brave Count Eudes escaped in order to hasten 
the arrival of the Emperor, and as soon as he saw him on 
the road returned to shut himself up with his people. The 
promised assistance appeared at last. Duke Henry con- 
ducted it, but he was killed and those who followed him 
were disbanded. Paris then seemed abandoned to its fate. 
The Northmen believed that total discouragement prevailed 
and that they could easily overcome the exhausted people. 
They attempted a general assault; the walls, everywhere 
manned by brave defenders, were still unapproachable. 

At the end of long months Charles at last arrived, with 
an army, on the heights of Montmartre. The Parisians, full 
of enthusiasm, were awaiting the signal for the combat, 
when they were told that the Emperor had again purchased 
the retreat of this enemy whom they had half conquered, 
and had allowed him to go and winter in Burgundy ; that is, 
to ravage that province. The Parisians refused to have any- 
thing to do with this disgraceful treaty and, Avhen the barges 
of the Northmen presented themselves to go through the 
bridges, refused to allow them to pass. The pirates were 
forced to drag their crafts over land, taking a roundabout 
way, in order to avoid the heroic city. Paris had gloriously 
won her title of capital of Prance; her chief, the brave 
Count Eudes, was destined to found the first national 
dynasty. 

The cowardly Emperor was deposed (887). The Carolin- 
gian Empire was irrevocably dismembered ; its ruins served 
to form seven kingdoms : Prance, Navarre, Cisjurane Bur- 
gundy, Transjurane Burgundy, Lorraine, Italy, and G-er- 
many. 

Beginning of the Feudal Regime. — But it was not only 
the Empire which was dismembered, it was also the king- 
dom and royalty. At the end of the reign of Charlemagne, 
feudalism was still not definitely constituted; at the ter- 



DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM. 97 

mination of- the reign of Charles the Bald, half a century- 
later, it was almost complete. For the royal authority had 
been ruined, as it had been under the last of the Merovin- 
gians, by the same causes and in the same manner. The 
king had no more money and no more lands to distribute. 

Destruction of Public Authority. — After the reign of 
Charles the Bald, public authority had disappeared. The 
kingdom, ravaged by the Northmen, the Bretons, and the 
Aquitanians, was a prey to robbery. E-obbery had become so 
much the custom of the country, that in his 23d capitulary 
(857), the king orders the bishops, counts, and missi to hold 
general courts, to which they should call every one without 
exception. The bishop was then to read the precepts of 
the Evangelists, the Fathers, and the prophets against rob- 
bers. He was to threaten the incorrigible with anathema, 
and to explain to them the terror of this penalty. The 
counts and the missi on their part were to read the laws of 
Charles and Louis against robbery. If the criminal should 
contemn both the sentences of the bishops and the prosecu- 
tions of the judges, the king was to order him into his pres- 
ence. If he refused to come, he was to be excluded from 
Holy Church on earth and in heaven. He was to be pursued 
until he was driven from the kingdom. But for this, pub- 
lic force was -necessary, and there was no longer any; and 
this was in fact the reason why the king endeavored to 
replace it by oaths and the fear of hell. 

At no period of history did the weak need protection 
more than during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Con- 
sequently the last of the freemen disappeared from a great 
portion of Gaul, especially to the north of the Loire. 

Meanwhile, here and there in the gorges of the moun- 
tains, at the fords of the rivers, on the hills overlooking the 
plains, entrenchments and walls were thrown up, where the 
brave and the strong protected themselves. The country 
was soon covered with them, and the invaders often dashed 
against them in vain. Invasions ceased. The lords of 
these castles were afterwards the terror of the country dis- 
tricts, but at the beginning they had saved them. Feudal- 
ism, so oppressive in its season of decline, had nevertheless 
had its season of legitimacy. These castles, it is true, be- 
came nests of robbers. Yet, little by little, a new order 
arose from this confusion. 

The Fief. — It has been seen how the king and the nobles 



98 DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM. 

assured themselves of the services of a nimiber of men more 
or less considerable, by granting them benefices, or even by- 
taking them under their protection, by making them their 
vassals. It was possible to be a beneficiary without being 
a vassal, and a vassal without being a beneficiary. Yet 
without doubt it more often happens that the man who 
receives a grant of land becomes the vassal of him who 
bestows it; the two qualities end by being confounded. 
A man was both beneficiary and vassal at once ; he imited 
the very strict obligations of both conditions. When an 
estate had been held for several generations by men who 
inherited these obligations with the soil, it seemed that this 
piece of land bore in itself its rights and its duties, which 
were communicated to him who held it. The result was 
that the estate, which lasted, was considered, rather than the 
man, who passed away and died. This land, thus charged 
with obligations, is the fief. 

Feudal France. — When France had become covered with 
fiefs each estate had its fixed conditions ; it had its lord, 
great or small, and there was no land without a lord, no lord 
without land. Eelations were established between the fiefs ; 
there were fiefs dominants, and fiefs domines. The fiefs 
dominant were those of the dukes and counts, who were like 
small kings in their duchies and their counties. Their vas- 
sals and their arri^re-vassals depended upon them, more 
than upon the king. The counts and dukes were the vas- 
sals of the king ; but by degrees, as one rose higher in the 
feudal hierarchy, the obligation of the vassal became looser. 

Such is the great revolution which was accomplished at 
the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth centuries. 
After the deposition of Charles the Fat, those great fiefs 
appeared, the names of which are found throughout the 
whole history of France. The Duke of Gascony possessed 
almost all the country south of the Garonne ; the counts of 
Toulouse, Auvergne, P6rigord, Poitou, and Berry, the prov- 
inces between the Garonne and the Loire. To the east and 
north of the Loire all belonged to the Count of Forez, the 
Duke of Burgundy, the Duke of France, and the counts of 
Flanders and Brittany, who exercised regal rights over their 
estates. There only remained for the king a few cities 
which he had not yet been obliged to bestow as fiefs. 

Power of the Church. — In the ninth century, royalty had 
lost its power ; feudalism had not yet acquired what it soon 



DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM. 99 

afterwards possessed; the Cliiirch alone exercised its full 
authority. Nothing was lacking to it ; superiority of intel- 
ligence and morality, the enthusiastic faith of the people, 
nor rich domains. Finally, at a time when everything was 
being subdivided, the ecclesiastical body was manifesting 
its unity and vigor by the fifty-six councils assembled in 
France during the reign of Charles the Bald alone. The 
bishops, starting from the right of the Church to interfere 
in the management of every man guilty of sin, logically 
arrived at the point of claiming the right to depose kings 
and dispose of crowns. They took part in the public 
administration. From the time of Charlemagne they are 
found participating in all affairs and speaking on all occa- 
sions with authority. It was they who degraded or restored 
Louis the Pious, who decided, at Fontanetum, which side 
was just. 

This power of the Church was a fortunate thing in those 
ages ; for when everything was a prey to the strongest, 
she alone was capable of reminding the people that above 
strength there was justice. In the face of the aristocratic 
principle of feudal organization, she held up that of human 
fraternity ; in the place of heredity and primogeniture, she 
practised election and proclaimed the rights of intelligence. 
If her claim to depose kings was a usurpation of temporal 
authority, it must be remembered that the latter had no 
counterpoise but the sacerdotal power, and that the weak 
and the oppressed had no refuge except in the protection of 
the churches. When law was powerless and opinion without 
authority, it was fortunate that somewhere could be found 
an avenger of outraged morality. 



FIFTH PERIOD. 

Feudal France (887-1180). 
CHAPTER XVI. 

THE LAST CAROLINGIANS AND THE DUKES OP PRANCE, 
(887-987 A.D.) 

Decline of Royalty. — Three-quarters of a century had 
not passed after the death of Charlemagne when there was 
no longer either Empire or Emperor. The king of France 
possessed little more than a title. Yet the tenth century 
was filled with the quarrel between the two houses which 
contended for the kingship. These fatal discords favored 
the invasions of fresh barbarians and the progress of feu- 
dalism. 

Eudes, Duke of France (887-898). — After the deposition 
of Charles the Fat, Count Eudes, who had so bravely de- 
fended Paris against the ISTorthmen, and who, as a reward, 
had received from the Emperor the duchy of France, was 
elected king. He was the son of Robert the Strong and 
ancestor of all the Capetians. But Eudes was recognized 
only by the lords between the Loire and the Meuse. Beyond 
the Meuse Arnulf, king of Germany, reigned ; and south of 
the Loire, the Duke of Aquitania had taken the title of king. 
At the same time the kingdom of Provence was divided into 
two parts : Cisjurane Burgundy under Louis, and Trans ju- 
rane Burgundy under E-odolph. Thus France had five kings. 
She was soon also to have a sixth, Charles the Simple, to 
say nothing of the kings of Navarre, or the kings of the 
Bretons. She had also, as constant and terrible guests, 
the Northmen, who henceforth never left her borders, and 



THE LAST CAROLINGIANS. 101 

the Saracens, who, in 889, established themselves at Fraxine- 
tum, on the coast of Provence. 

Success of Eudes against the Northmen. — Eudes bravely 
extricated himself from all these difficulties. He did not 
recover either Lorraine or the two kingdoms of Burgundy, 
left the Bretons to quarrel among themselves, forgot Na- 
varre, and agreed to recognize a sort of suzerainty on the part 
of the Carolingian Arnulf . But he forced the Duke of Aqui ■ 
tania to renounce the title of king and swear fealty to him, 
and he gained tv^o victories over the Northmen. But the 
heathen had spread over too much of the country to feel 
intimidated by the defeat of one of their bands. They at 
this same time captured and sacked Meaux, Troyes, Toul, 
Verdun, Dreux and St. L6. 

Rivalry of Eudes and Charles the Simple (893). — To the 
evils caused by the new barbarians were added those of civil 
war. The partisans of the Carolingian dynasty placed at 
their head Charles the Simple, a posthumous son of Louis II., 
and the archbishop of Rheims consecrated him (893). His 
partisans were only seeking to complete the ruin of royalty 
and to establish themselves in their usurpations. But 
Eudes appeared before Rheims with such an army that his 
competitor fled for refuge to Arnulf of Germany. The 
latter commanded the counts and bishops of Lotharingia 
to re-establish his kinsman in his paternal kingdom. The 
counts refused, and Eudes remained victorious. But he 
was unhappily carried off by a premature death at the age 
of forty. His brother, Robert, inherited his duchy of 
France, and Charles the Simple succeeded him as king 
without opposition. 

Charles the Simple (898-922) ; Establishment of the North- 
men in France (911). — Charles ceded to the Norse chief, 
Rollo, the province which was ever after called Normandy. 
This treaty, signed at St. Clair-sur-Epte, was a fortunate 
agreement, for it put an end to those devastating proceedings 
which had lasted for a century. The new lords of the land 
mingled with the old inhabitants, forgot their own language 
and their ferocity, but retained that spirit of adventure, that 
love of gain, which had carried them into so many countries, 
and which was one day to take them into Southern Italy 
and England. The new duke consented to be baptized at 
Rouen, and his companions imitated his example (912). 
He divided the country among them and established good 



102 THE LAST CAROLINGIANS 

order. Peace and good order restored cultivation in tliis 
rich province ; servitude was abolished in it at an early 
date. It was in Normandy that the feudal regime was con- 
stituted with the greatest regularity, that the schools of the 
convents were most flourishing. And there also that new 
art seemed to take its rise, which was to erect such mag- 
nificent monuments, the pointed style of architecture. 
.^ Election of Robert, Duke of France (922); and of Eodolph, 
^ Duke of Burgundy (923-9^6). — In 920, the lords declared 
that they would no longer obey king Charles, unless within 
a year he changed his conduct and sent away his minister 
Haganon. They kept their word ; in 922, they crowned 
Eobert, Duke of France, as their king. An encounter took 
place the following year between the two princes. Charles 
was defeated, his rival killed. But the son-in-law of Robert, 
Rodolph, Duke of Burgundy, succeeded him. 

Germany, more faithful to the blood of Charlemagne, 
furnished aid to Charles the Simple against his new adver- 
sary; but without avail. Made prisoner by the treason of 
Herbert, Count of Vermandois, he was shut up in the castle 
of P^ronne, where he died in 929. Eodolph reigned seven 
years more without much glory. Cessions of land like that 
made to Eollo had put an end to the ravages of the northern 
pirates. Provence suffered a great deal from the Saracens, 
who maintained themselves there for eighty-four years. 
The Hungarians, more numerous and more terrible than 
the Saracens, happily made only occasional incursions into 
Prance. 

Louis IV. d'Outre-Mer (936-954). — At the death of Eo- 
dolph, Hugh the Great, Duke of Prance, his brother-in-law, 
recalled from England a son of Charles the Simple, Louis 
IV., surnamed d'Outre-Mer, aged fifteen. His activity and 
courage were useless. He obtained the support of some 
lords who were jealous of the power of the Duke of France. 
But when he tried to re-create a domain for himself, Hugh 
took up arms to check this unexpected ambition, and Louis 
being taken prisoner was kept in captivity for a whole year. 
Hugh did not open the doors of his prison until he had com- 
pelled him to cede to him the city of Laon, the last which 
remained in the possession of the unfortunate king. Louis 
complained to the Pope and to the king of Germany, and a 
council excommunicated the Duke of Prance. The latter 
withstood all threats and even an invasion of Otto the Great. 



AND THE DUKES OF FRANCE. 103 

Lothair and Louis V. (954-987). — Louis IV. was killed 
accidentally, while hunting, in 955, at tlie age of thirty-four, 
and thus ended "this life so full of grief and trouble." Hugh 
the Great, his brother-in-law, gave the crown to his nephew 
Lothair, the son of Louis. This prince showed considerable 
energy; the pretensions of Otto to restore the empire 
rallied around the king of France the great vassals of 
several countries. The war which ensued was disastrous to 
Otto. It was much for Lothair to have been able to with- 
stand so powerful a monarch. Obliged to abandon upper 
Lorraine (980), he nevertheless obtained for his brother 
Charles the duchy of lower Lorraine or Brabant. He 
died in 986. His son, Louis V., was killed the following 
year by a fall from his horse, before having accomplished 
anything of which history has any record. With him ended 
the race of Carolingians in France. 

The last descendants of Charlemagne evinced greater cour- 
age and activity than the last descendants of Clovis, and 
they deserved a better ending. The cause of their weak- 
ness was the extreme poverty to which they were reduced 
in consequence of the heredity of fiefs. As they had 
nothing to bestow in return for services rendered them, 
they were gradually abandoned. In their isolation they 
sought assistance abroad ; they made friends with the for- 
eigners. But the invasions of the Germans in their behalf 
brought about the peaceable advent of a new dynasty, more 
French and more national. 



104 GENEALOGICAL TABLE. 



Genealogical Table op the Kings of the 
Second Race. 

(The date which follows each name is that of death.) 
Pippin of Landen Saint Arnulf, 640 



Grimwald, 639 Begga Ansegis, 678 



Pippin of Heristal, 714 
Charles Martel, 741 



Carloman, 747 Pippin the Short 

(king in 752), 768 



Charlemagne, 814 Carloman, 771 

Liouis the Pious, 840 



Lothair, 855 Pippin, 838 Louis, 876. Charles the Bald, 877 

Charles the Fat, 888 | 

king and emperor liOuis II., 879 



1 I I 

Iiouis III., 882 Carloman, 884 Charles the Simple, '. 



liOuis IV., d'Outre-Mer, 959 



liOthair, 986 Charles, Duke of Lorraine, 992 

liOuis v., 987 



THE FIRST FOUR GAPETIANS. 105 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE FIRST FOUR GAPETIANS. 
(OS'V-llOS A.D.) 

Hugh Capet (887-996). — Charles, the Carolingian Duke 
of Lower Lorraine, was still living. But Hugh Capet, 
eldest son of Hugh the Great, and. Duke of France, Count 
of Paris and Orleans, also abbot of St. Martin of Tours, St. 
Denis and St. Germain des Pr4s, that is to say, having at 
his disposal the revenues of three of the richest abbeys of 
France, decided to assume at last the title of king. The 
Duke of Burgundy was his brother, the Duke of Normandy 
his brother-in-law. These princes, meeting in conference at 
Senlis with the principal lords and bishops of France, re- 
jected Charles of Lorraine and proclaimed Hugh Capet, who 
was crowned at Noyon. Thus France became finally sepa- 
rated from Germany and the Empire. 

Union of a Great Fief with the Crown. — Hugh Capet 
founded a house which but lately still ruled from several 
of the thrones of Europe. But the name of king in the 
tenth century carried with it so little real power, that this 
• termination of the Carolingian dynasty and this advent of 
a third royal race caused little sensation in the remote 
provinces. It was however an important event. The 
princes of the first race had been kings of the Franks ; 
those of the second, Emperors. Hugh Capet was king of 
France, territorial sovereign. Besides, the crown was united 
to a great fief. The king became, as Duke of France, Count 
of Paris, Orleans, etc., if not as king, the equal of the most 
powerful lords. He had his son crowned king during the 
first year of his reign, and so abolished elections with their 
attending anarchy. 

Opposition to the New King. — The powerful counts of 
Flanders, Vermandois, and Troyes, and the archbishop of 
Sens, declared for Charles of Lorraine. But Hugh reduced 
the archbishop of Sens, by threatening to have him deposed 
by the Pope and by the bishops of his ecclesiastical province. 



106 THE FIRST FOUR CAPETIANS. 

He made preparations, formidable for that period, against 
tlie counts of Planders and Vermandois, and tlie two counts 
submitted. In 991, treason terminated the struggle. Charles, 
delivered into the hands of his rival by the bishop of Laon, 
was imprisoned in the tower of Orleans, where he died the 
following year. Hugh Capet was less successful in Aqui- 
tania. He thoroughly overcame the Count of Poitiers, who 
paid him homage ; but did not insist upon gaining the sub- 
mission of the intractable Aquitanians. 

Forced Inactivity of the First Capetians. — During their 
first century, the Capetians reigned but did not govern. 
They had a title, but they had not the power necessary to 
enforce the ancient rights with which this title had been 
traditionally invested. Of the first three successors of 
Hugh Capet (906-1108), history has little to say. But we 
ought not to demand of the first Capetians more than they 
could accomplish. Since the heredity of fiefs had parcelled 
out the territory, and heredity of offices had divided author- 
ity, there remained to the king neither sufficient material 
power, nor sufficient influence, to act efficiently outside of his 
own domains. He lived upon his own domains as did the 
other feudal lords. He held his court of justice, plenary 
court and parliament ; made journeys from one of his cities 
to another, and interrupted his long periods of leisure only 
by repeated acts of devotion, long hunts in the forests, or 
a war against some neighboring baron. In the rest of 
the kingdom everything took its own course ; the lords, 
each on his own estate, made laws and made war, judged 
and executed, without any interference from the king. 

Alliance of the First Capetians with the Church, — The 
Capetians had, however, followed the example of the first 
Carolingians, and united themselves closely with the Church. 
The Church consecrated their claim and made it popular. 
Hugh Capet restored to the Church several abbeys in his 
possession. Robert was a real saint ; the princes of the 
new dynasty deserve the title bestowed upon them by grate- 
ful Eome, the eldest sons of the Church. Hence the bishops 
and abbots of the lle-de-Prance were often important aux- 
iliaries to the first Capetians. 

Character of Capetian Royalty. — The Eoman tradition was 
perpetuated, preserved by the Church, and in the feudal 
suzerain, the sovereign was respected even when he was not 
obeyed. All the inhabitants of the kingdom of the Franks 



THE FIRST FOUR CAPETIANS. 107 

were, in law, the Jicleles of the Capetians. Kings, whether of 
the fii'st, second, or third race, all were kings by the same 
title, had the same agents or royal officers ; the difference 
is only in the means of action. 

Robert (996-1031) ; ftueen Constance and the Aquitanians. 
— Hugh Capet died in 996, at the age of fifty-four. Robert, 
his son, began his reign in the midst of the fears which 
filled the hearts of many of the faithful, at the approach of 
the year 1000 ; a date at which, in accordance with the 
Apocalypse, the world was expected to come to an end. 
Robert was more a monk than a king, constantly occupied 
with charities and the chants of the Church. Yet the Pope 
excommunicated him for having married his cousin Bertha. 
In spite of his piety, Robert at first resisted the thunder- 
bolts of Rome. But the terror spread among the people 
by the Papal sentence was so great that Robert submitted ; 
he separated from Bertha and married Constance. 

This imperious woman, whom the king himself soon 
found reason to fear, was the daughter of the Count of 
Toulouse. She brought with her some of the troubadours 
who were charming all the Southern country by their songs. 
But these Aquitanians by their elegance, their luxury, and 
the frivolity of their manners, greatly shocked the French 
of the North, and we see in the writers of the time curious 
evidences of the antipathy of the two races. It will be 
necessary when we arrive at the Albigensian crusade to 
remember these old prejudices of the French of the North 
against those of the South, in order to understand the 
atrocious character of that war. 

Constance became the torment of the king. He concealed 
himself from her in order to devote himself to his charities ; 
and she incited to revolt, first her eldest son Hugh, who 
died in 1025, then Henry, her third son. 

Foreign Affairs; Acquisition of the Duchy of Burgundy 
(1016) . — Abroad the king of France was more regarded 
than at home. Under the preceding reign, Duke Borel, 
who commanded in the Spanish Marches, threatened by 
the Saracens, had invoked the aid of Hugh Capet. The 
Italians, wishing to rid themselves of the German domina- 
tion, offered the crown of their country to Robert ; the lords 
of Lorraine offered to recognize him as their sovereign. 
Robert declined both offers. Yet he acquired the duchy of 
Burgundy, after a war of five years (1016). The royal 



108 THE FIRST FOUR CAFETIANS. 

house found itself temporarily possessed of two of the 
largest fiefs, the duchies of France and Burgundy. 

Persecution of the Jews (1010) ; First Burning of Heretics 
(1022). — We must notice under Eobert's reign, in 997, an 
insurrection of the serfs of Normandy, a persecution of the 
Jews, and the first execution of heretics in France. Thir- 
teen of these unfortunate persons were burned at Orleans 
(1022), and others elsewhere. Heresy roused the indigna- 
tion of the f aithfid and the Church, but it attested a certain 
movement of mind. The first renaissance began in the 
eleventh century. 

Henry I. (1031-1060). — Henry I. was only the third son 
of Robert ; one of his elder brothers was dead, and the 
other, "being an imbecile, was not king." Henry had to 
suffer from the ambition of his mother. Constance wished 
that the crown should pass to her fourth son, Robert. 
Henry only rid himself of this rivalry by ceding Burgundy 
to his brother. This Robert was the head of the first Cape- 
tian house of Burgundy, which continued to exist until the 
year 1361. 

Henry's reign of thirty years is void of events. With 
the exception of a few expeditions into Normandy, most of 
which were unsuccessful, Henry I. did nothing. The most 
remarkable act of his reign was the marriage of the king to 
a daughter of the Grand Duke of Russia. Henry selected a 
princess from a house so remote in order to be sure that she 
could not be related to him in a degree prohibited by the 
Church. Anne, it was said, was descended through her 
mother, the daughter of the Emperor Romanus II., from 
Philip of Macedon, whence her first-born son received the 
name of Philip. 

The Dukes of Normandy ; the Counts of Blois and Anjou. 
— While royalty accomplished nothing, the lords accom- 
plished much. Three of them especially, at that time, 
filled all France with the noise of their ambitious designs 
and their wars. 

Robert, surnamed the Magnificent by the nobles, and the 
Devil by the people, had usurped the ducal crown of Nor- 
mandy. By the force of his energy and courage he over- 
came all resistance, and, having niade himself incontestably 
master of Normandy, interfered in the affairs of all of his 
neighbors. He sustained king Henry against his brother, 
which gained him, as a reward, French Vexin. He invaded 



THE FIRST FOUR CAPETIANS. 109 

Brittany and forced Duke Alan to do him homage (1033). 
In 1035, seized with remorse, he went to Jerusalem to seek 
repose for his conscience, and died while on his return. 

The son and successor of Robert the Magnificent was 
the celebrated William the Bastard, who had at first great 
difficulty in securing the obedience of his vassals. The 
battle of Val des Dunes, near Caen (1046), finally delivered 
him from his adversaries. King Henry, his sovereign, who 
had fought for him, soon found the young duke too power- 
ful, and became the ally of his enemies. This was the 
cause of the numerous encounters between the Normans 
and the French (inhabitants of the lle-de-France), the lat- 
ter being usually sustained by the Angevins and the Bretons. 
The most bloody of these combats was that of Mortemer, in 
1054, a signal victory for the JSTormans, after which the 
frightened king retired in great haste, and G-eoffrey Martel, 
Count of Anjou, was obliged to abandon to William the sov- 
ereignty of Maine. 

Eudes II., Count of Blois, tried to seize upon the kingdom 
of Provence, and afterwards upon Lorraine, and even 
counted uxJon adding, to the Lotharingia thus reconsti- 
tuted, the crown of Italy. But a battle in the Barrois annihi- 
lated the hopes of the turbulent baron. Eudes was defeated 
there and killed (1037). 

Fulk Nerra, or the Black, Count of Anjou, was still more 
celebrated. He made three pilgrimages to the Holy Land, 
where he underwent severe penance. Fulk had indeed 
many crimes to expiate. Of his two wives he had had one 
burned, or, according to some accounts, had himself stabbed 
her with a dagger, after she had escaped from a precipice 
whence he had had her thrown. He compelled the other, by 
his cruel treatment, to retire to Palestine. His son, G-eof- 
frey Martel, was also a fighter. He had attempted, in 1036, 
to compel his father, by force of arms, to cede to him the 
county of Anjou; but old Fulk conquered him and forced 
the rebel son to crawl on his hands and knees for several 
miles, with ■ a saddle on his back, and thus come to the 
count's feet to implore pardon. Geoffrey Martel, jealous of 
the power of the Duke of Normandy, joined Henry I. against 
him. His successors carried out this policy, and the kings 
of France possessed, in the counts of Anjou, useful allies 
against the Norman dukes, and Norman kings of England, 
up to the moment when these counts themselves fell heirs 
to the Britannic crown. 



110 THE FIRST FOUR CAPETIANS. 

Philip I. (1060-1108). — Philip I. was only seven years 
old at the time of his father's death. He saw a few gentle- 
men from Coutances subjugate Southern Italy and Sicily, 
a Capetian of the house of Burgundy found the kingdom 
of Portugal, the Duke of Normandy, William the Bastard, 
achieve the conquest of England, and all the chivalry of 
France set out on the first crusade. He allowed all these 
things to be accomplished without taking any part in them. 
At last, however, urged by jealousy of his too powerful 
rival, the Duke of Normandy, he made some opposition to 
him. He took part with the Bretons against him, and helped 
his eldest son Robert, who had revolted against his father. 
William entered the domains of the king, destroying every- 
thing by fire and sword. Mantes Avas taken and burned, 
even the churches, and his skirmishers burned the villages 
even to the very gates of Paris. Fortunately he met with 
an accident at Mantes and died soon after near Rouen 
(1087). 

The king of France continued the same policy under the 
successor of the Conqueror, but with the same inefficiency. 
He again took part with Robert, Duke of Normandy, against 
William Rufus, who had usurped from his eldest brother 
the kingdom of England, and then suffered himself to be 
bought off by the latter. He clearly perceived the peril 
which threatened France with a king of England possessing 
Normandy and thus master of the approaches to Paris, but 
he had not the courage to make the effort necessary to 
avert it. Yet under this indolent prince, the domain was 
increased. by the addition of French Vexin, Gitinais, and 
the viscounty of Bourges, which he bought. 



FRANCE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. Ill 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

FRANCE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. — EXPOSITION OF 
THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 

Three Different Societies. — In the sixth century there 
were three societies in Gaul (p. 53) : the Gallo-Eomans, the 
Barbarians, and the Cliurch. In the eleventh there were 
also three : the lords, the clergy, and the serfs, each having 
its customs, its own organization, and to a certain extent its 
own special language and literature; the first two, rich, 
powerful and active ; the last, poor and oppressed. 

The Feudal Society ; Fiefs and Vassals. — It has been seen 
that the edict of Mersen, in 847, allowed every free man to 
choose his lord, and that the edict of Kiersy paved the way, 
in 877, for heredity of royal officers. These edicts set the 
seal upon a revolution begun long before, and out of which 
arose a new social order, which, after having ruled Europe 
completely for several centuries, has even yet not entirely 
disappeared. 

There had been since the time of the Carolingians two 
principal kinds of landed property : cdlods, lands free from 
taxation and dues ; and benefices, lands burdened with dues 
more or less numerous. He who had received a benefice or 
fief was obliged to render to him who had bestowed it 
either personal services, or jDayments in kind, in exchange 
for which he could count upon being protected by the donor. 
The most important of these obligations was that of military 
service. Owners of allods, free of all rents, but isolated, 
sought for protection by recommending themselves to some 
powerful man in the vicinity ; i.e., by making a fictitious 
cession of lands to the protector whom they had chosen, 
in order to receive it again from his hands as a benefice, 
with all those charges of military service and payments in 
kind with which the beneficiary property was burdened. 
This custom became general. Charlemagne himself con- 
tributed to render it so by the obligation which he imposed 
upon all freemen to choose a lord and to remain faithful to 



112 FRANCE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. 

Mm. Towards the end of the reign of Charles the Bald, 
the revolution was accomplished ; henceforth there were, in 
general, no lands which were not benefices, or fiefs ; that is 
to say, each estate was dependent upon another and each 
man upon some other man. The former was the Jief mouvant 
held by the vassals; the latter the fief dominant held by the 
suzerain or lord. Such fiefs naturally tended to become 
hereditary, and under the weak successors of Charlemagne 
heredity of benefices acquired the force of a custom and 
soon of a right. 

Heredity of Public Functions or Offices. — It was the 
same with the public offices and the titles of duke, count, 
etc., to which was attached an authority delegated by the 
prince. Charlemagne watched over the too free manners 
of his counts and kept them aware that he himself was the 
master. His successors could not carry out this wise policy. 
Without money, without lands, the kings had no longer the 
power to prevent their officers from assuming hereditary 
possession of the functions with which they were invested. 

This usurpation of the royal rights gave each great land- 
owner or lord sovereign prerogatives ; the right to make 
war, to coin money, to make laws, to judge and to execute 
sentences, etc. This usurpation took place in all degrees of 
the administrative hierarchy, among the dukes, counts, 
viscounts, and centenarii, and the result was the feudal sys- 
tem. One hundred and fifty tenants-in-chief, at the acces- 
sion of Hugh Capet, exercised the right of coining money, 
and many others made war at will, legislated, and judged. 
Throughout the whole territory, public office was trans- 
formed into individual privilege. Each great proprietor 
had had, from time immemorial, a domestic jurisdiction over 
his slaves, serving-men, coloni and tenants. The usurj^ation 
of the lords therefore did not consist in attributing to them- 
selves the right to administer justice, but in assuming the 
right, as sovereigns, to pronounce final sentence. 

There were few landowners in the Middle Ages ; but 
landownership was much more strongly constituted than 
at the present day, because it bestowed political, legislative, 
and judical power. Property and magistracy were one and 
the same thing. The feudal lord was at once both proprie- 
tor and sovereign. 

The Feudal Hierarchy. — Those lords who did homage 
to the king in person, as the counts of Champagne and 



EXPOSITION OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 113 

Flanders, the dukes of Burgundy and Aquitania, were called 
grand vassals. The proprietors of fiefs formed a vast hie- 
rarchy in which each usually sustained the double character 
of sovereign and vassal. Thus a count, the vassal of a 
duke or a king, was suzerain of several viscounts, barons or 
knights. The king of France was himself the vassal of the 
abbot of St. Denis for an estate which he held of that abbey. 
But it is to be observed that a count was not always and 
everywhere superior to a viscount and subordinate to a duke. 
The hierarchical subordination existed only in the interior 
of each fief ; and the Count of Anjou had nothing in common 
with the Duke of Burgundf^, except his title of vassal of 
the crown of France. In many of the fiefs the vassals 
treated their suzerain as the great nobles treated the king 
of France. It was the expressly recognized right of the 
vassal to make war against his lord whenever he thought 
proper, withdrawing his homage, on condition of restoring 
the fief, which he usually took care not to do. Finally, a 
man might be the vassal of two different sovereigns and be 
required by each of them at the same time to perform 
military service. 

Homage; Fidelity; Investiture. — The feudal relation was 
established by a ceremony which consisted of three princi- 
pal formalities. He who received land from another knelt 
before him, his hands in those of his future lord, and 
declared that he would become his man. Then he took the 
oath of fidelity. Then the lord, in his turn, gave him the 
land by investiture, giving him a turf, a twig from a tree, 
or, in the case of the great fiefs, a standard. 

Suzerain and Vassal. — This triple ceremony over, the one 
became the suzerain, the other the vassal, and from that 
moment duties and reciprocal rights bound them together. 
The suzerain owed justice and protection to his vassal and 
could not withdraw his fief except by reason of forfeiture 
or treason. The most important of all the obligations im- 
posed upon the vassal was that of following the suzerain to 
war. The conditions upon which the vassals received their 
fiefs determined for how many days they should render this 
service, and with how many men. Some rendered this ser- 
vice only within the limits of the estates of the suzerain, 
and for his defence, not for attack. Abbots and women, per- 
sonally exempt from service, furnished substitutes. The 
vassal was also obliged to assist his overlord by his counsel, 



114 FRANCE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. 

when lie required it, and to serve him in his court of justice. 
There were also the feudal aids. The vassal was under obli- 
gation to help his suzerain to pay his ransom, to marry his 
eldest daughter, to arm his eldest son as knight, to equip 
himself for the journey to the Holy Land. At each succes- 
sion to a fief, the lord collected a relief, which was paid by 
the heir of the fief when he received investiture. It was a 
sum of money, or a war horse, a saddle, arms, etc. If a vas- 
sal sold his fief, a sum equal to a year's revenue was paid 
to the suzerain. The fief left without an heir, or under 
confiscation for faitlilessness on the part of the vassal, re- 
verted to the lord. The vassal who was a minor was under 
the guardianship of the suzeram, who collected the income 
until his majority. Female wards must marry none but the 
man presented to them by their suzerain, or pay a consider- 
able sum. 

There were, moreover, moral obligations. The vassal was 
expected to keep the secrets of his suzerain, to expose the 
intrigues of his enemies, and always to defend his honor ; 
in a word, he was to spare neither his person nor his prop- 
erty in order to save him from peril or shame. These obli- 
gations fulfilled, the vassal became almost absolute master 
of his own fief, and could lose it only through unfaithfulness. 

Peers ; Judicial Duel ; Private War. — The vassals of the 
same lord Avere peers or equals of each other (pares), and 
composed his court of justice, from which appeal was per- 
mitted to the court of the superior suzerain. In all cases, 
judicial combat, or duel in the arena, decided questions of 
justice and truth. The conquered was necessarily the crim- 
inal. It was God who pronounced the sentence. When 
one of the parties was a woman, a cleric, a child, or an old 
man, she or he cou.ld have a champion for a substitute, but 
ran all the risks of the combat. The defeat of the champion 
was the condemnation of him whom he represented. If men 
were too impatient for these processes, they immediately 
had recourse to arms, exercising the right of private war. 

All the lords did not have equal jurisdiction. There was 
the higher, the middle, and the lower justice, and certain 
nobles had only the second and the last. The distinctions 
between them sometimes depended upon the nature of pen- 
alties, sometimes upon the status of the persons amenable 
to the tribunal. The right of high justice carried with it the 
right to pronounce sentence of death. 



EXPOSITION OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 115 

A Feudal Castle. — The castles of the feudal lords were 
generally enormous edifices, round or square, placed on high 
positions so as to secure an extensive outlook, massive, with- 
out architecture or ornament, and pierced only by a few 
loop-holes, through which arrows were shot, and having 
often five walls each higher than the other. 

The draw-bridge, when raised, covered the castle gate, 
which was still further defended by the portcullis or heavy 
iron grating, sliding in grooves. In the angles of the for- 
tress rose large towers furnished with battlements which 
protected the defenders of the place against arrows shot 
from outside ; and by machicolations, parapets opening be- 
low, through which boiling water and burning pitch could 
be poured on the assailants when they came to the foot of 
the wall. It being desirable to place the donjon in the 
most inaccessible part of the castle, so as to occupy and 
command the whole place, it was usually constructed in the 
middle, though sometimes it touched the ramparts. Im- 
mense subterranean passages led from it to an opening far 
away in the plain or the forest. 

The Troubadour and the Trouvere. — Man can neither fight 
nor hunt always. The pilgrim, who passed by from time 
to time, entertained the inhabitants of the manorial res- 
idence by pious recitals and news from foreign countries. 
But a fortunate thing was the arrival of a bard, called in the 
North trouvdre and in the South troubadour, who, seated by 
the fireside of the lord, sang to him, during the long even- 
ings, the marvellous exploits of the knights of the Round 
Table, of Roland, Charlemagne and his twelve peers, or 
tragical adventures, or the exploits of Reynard the Fox. 

Tournaments. — There were also plays and festivals ; but 
the plays and feasts of this warlike society were challenges 
and combats often mortal, jousts, and tournaments. Only 
arms of courtesy were borne at these tournaments ; that is, 
arms without point or of blunt edge ; but in combats <X 
outrance, ordinary arms were carried. The judges of the 
tournament made the knights swear to fight loyally, and 
after measuring the lances and swords, gave the signal for 
the combat. The combatants rushed against each other ; if 
their lances broke against the bucklers, or the iron armor of 
their opponents, they fought with the sword or the battle- 
axe till one of the two was conquered. The ladies often 
awarded the prize. These festivals always attracted a great 



116 FRANCE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. 

number of princes, lords, and knights, but always some were 
borne from tbe lists dying or dead. 

Arms. — Until the time of Charlemagne arms had been 
mostly offensive ; in the Middle Ages they were mostly de- 
fensive. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the 
knights wore the coat of mail or hauberk, which covered 
the warrior from head to foot, and under it the gambeson or 
hacqueton. The helmet, of thin iron, covered the head and 
allowed sight and breatliing only through narrow openings. 
The helmet was only worn by knights, but all warriors wore 
an iron cap. The shield or buckler completed the defensive 
armor. The offensive arms were the sword, the lance, the 
battle-axe, the mace, the flail, and the dagger. Foot-soldiers 
carried only a knife and bow, or the crossbow, which had 
been brought from Asia in the twelfth century. 

Eeligious Society ; Ecclesiastical Feudalism. — In the 
tenth century, the ecclesiastical lands, acquired by the 
gifts of the faithful, covered vast tracts throughout all 
Catholic Europe. The relative security which was enjoyed 
upon such lands increased the population. Many of the 
small proprietors commended themselves and their lands 
to the churches, in order to secure their protection. The 
tithes, rendered obligatory by Charlemagne, assured still 
other riches to the clergy, and tlie voluntary jurisdiction, 
which Constantine had recognized as belonging to them, in- 
creased from day to day at the expense of the ordinary tri- 
bunals. In the last days of the Koman Empire, the bishops 
had held a high position in the cities. They had often 
been invested with the ofiice of defensores civitatis. After- 
wards the barbarian kings had called them to their councils, 
employed them as missi dominici, and often as counts. Thus 
uniting political and spiritual authority, the bishop was 
often the suzerain of all the lords of his diocese. The 
church possessed immense wealth. In order to protect it 
from the robberies of the times, she chose laymen to whom 
she confided her domains, that they might defend them 
with the sword. But these advocati of the monasteries and 
the churches, like the king's counts, rendered their func- 
tions hereditary and took for themselves the property which 
had been committed to their care. They however consented 
to consider themselves vassals of those whom they had de- 
spoiled. The abbots and bishops thus became temporal 
lords, having numerous vassals ready to take up arms for 



EXPOSITION OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 117 

their cause, a court of justice, — all the prerogatives, indeed, 
which were exercised by the great proprietors. The ecclesi- 
astical feudalism was so extensive, so powerful, that in 
France and in England, it possessed in the Middle Ages 
more than a fifth of all the lands ; in Germany almost a 
third. For the church was daily acquiring new lands. 
There were indeed few of the faithful who died without 
leaving her some property. 

Councils ; the Papacy. — This external situation of the 
church seemed necessarily to react upon its internal organi- 
zation. The bishops and abbots, who were seated among 
the great ones of the land, and who, in such assemblies, 
held the first rank, formed in temporal affairs a great 
aristocratic body, having political indej)endence, and de- 
siring also to have, in a certain degree, spiritual indepen- 
dence. They also tried to create, for the regidation of the 
religious interests of their dioceses, a sort of parliamentary 
government, by frequently convening provincial and national 
councils. 

But these bishops had a chief, the Pope. After the 
energetic pontificate of Nicholas I. (858-867), the Papacy, 
dominated by the factions which desolated the city of Rome, 
fell into extreme decline, and lived in the midst of great 
scandals. Yet meanwhile the theologians drew up, un- 
opposed, the False Decretals, which made the Pope the 
judge of all bishops and all kings ; and the monks, in their 
preaching, were everywhere advocating the sovereign inter- 
vention of the head of the Church. Then this unarmed priest, 
whose voice was powerless in Rome, was heard to speak 
with authority beyond the mountains, through his legates, 
to bishops and kings ; removed convents from the jurisdic- 
tion of bishops, in order to place them directl}^ under his 
own authority ; encouraged the institution of chapters, which 
soon arrogated to themselves, at the expense of the bishop, 
a direct authority in the administration of the diocese ; and 
finally declared, by the mouth of Nicholas I., that the decrees 
of the Pope should be law throughout the whole Church, 
and that under the title of universal bishop the sovereign 
pontiff could exercise episcopal rights in all churches. 

The pontifical monarchy was therefore, from the ninth 
century on, firmly established; but in the tenth, the im- 
perial authority, reconstructed by Otto of Germany, would 
not suffer partition, and the result was the famous quarrel 
on the subject of investitures. 



118 FRANCE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. 

The Monks. — Martin of Tours founded the first monastery 
of Gaul, that of Ligug6, near Poitiers. In the sixth cen- 
tury St. Benedict drew up the famous rule which, adopted 
by almost all the monks of the West, gave rise to the 
celebrated order of the Benedictines. It imposed prayer 
but also manual labor, which led the brothers to work 
uncultivated lands ; reading, which obliged them to copy 
manuscripts ; perpetual vows, which permitted stricter dis- 
cipline and a more regular organization. The abbot was 
elected, but after the election his authority was almost 
absolute in the monastery. In those terrible times, men 
who were not made to live amid the violence of the world 
experienced great relief in placing their entire intellectual 
being under a paternal guidance, with the certainty of pos- 
sessing during this life a secure and peaceful retreat ; in 
the other, salvation. Consequently monasteries multiplied 
rapidly. They were endowed with great domains through 
the piety of the kings and of the faithful, favored by the 
bishops, to whose jurisdiction they were subject, and, in 
those days, did great good. These monasteries were most 
often asylums of peace, of piety, of work, and even of 
learning. 

Letters in the Church. — Charlemagne had had, like all 
great minds, a strong desire to rule over a civilized empire 
rather than over barbarians. He gave orders that schools 
should be established, and that they should be attended not 
only by the sons of serfs, but by those of freemen. Such 
commands tended to form an intelligent society among the 
laity, which would have changed the whole history of the 
Middle Ages. But after Charlemagne was dead, the nobility 
in the schools threw away Latin grammar and Teutonic 
grammar. They saw with delight the opening of the career 
of civil war, — a career in which each one could do as he 
liked, and in which everything was the prize of courage. 

Hincmar and Seotus Erigena. — Ecclesiastical society, at 
least, preserved something of the impulse given to study 
by Charlemagne. The ninth century showed an intellectual 
development which is not without a certain grandeur. Hinc- 
mar succeeded Alcuin, and Charles the Bald strove to 
imitate Charlemagne. Education was recommended by laws 
and councils ; attempts were made to restore the Carolingian 
schools. 

There was even a movement of philosophic ideas which 



EXPOSITION OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 119 

presaged tliose of tlie great centuries of the Middle Ages. 
The monk Gottschalk had believed that he could find in the 
writings of St. Augustine the dogma of predestination, but 
was silenced, condemned by two councils and shut up for life 
in a cloister, by Hincmar. The celebrated John Scotus 
Erigena {i.e., the Irishman) also provoked repression by his 
purely human and philosophical reasoning, founded on the 
study of the philosophy of the ancients. 

Fresh Decline at the End of the Ninth Century, and Sec- 
ond Renaissance in the Eleventh. — But political confusion 
increased. Learning took refuge in isolated monasteries. 
Frightful misery prevailed everywhere ; pestilence and fam- 
ine decimated the nations. The year 1000 approached; 
nothing was built, nothing repaired, nothing laid by for 
the future. 

But this troubled time i^assed by as all others had done. 
The sun rose as usual in the first day of the year 1000. 
Suspended life resumed its course with renewed activity. 
The world thanked God, who had allowed it to live, by a 
great desire for Christian unity and religious heroism which 
found its expression in the Crusades. Churches were re- 
built, and monasteries founded ; 326 were established in the 
eleventh century, 802 in the twelfth. Mental activity re- 
vived. Pope Sylvester II. attained a scientific knowledge 
which later caused him to pass among the ignorant for 
a magician sold to the devil. The second renaissance 
occurred especially in France and particularly in Normandy. 
The abbey of Bee, made famous from its foundation by the 
presence of the two great doctors, Lanfranc and St. Anselm, 
and many others, were built in this period. In the seclu- 
sion of these monasteries the monks were no longer content 
with copying manuscripts. They were interested in the 
events which took place around them- and wrote descrip- 
tions of them, or strove to establish their faith firmly by 
theological discussions which again became learned. Eicher 
and William of Jumi^ges composed valuable histories. 

Lanfranc and Ansehn, Berengar and Roscelinus. — Still 
others taught, and the scholars gathered about them. At 
Caen, the Italian Lanfranc (1005-1089), afterward arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, had more than 4000 auditors. This 
renewed mental activity sometimes led men astray from the 
old paths. We have spoken of the heresy which brought 
thirteen unfortunate persons to the stake in 1022. Another, 



120 FRANCE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. 

stirred up by Berengar of Tours, troubled the Church for 
more than thirty years (1050-1080). Berengar tried to give 
reasons for his faith, and boldly attempted to reason con- 
cerning the mysteries of the Eucharist. Lanfranc was his 
principal adversary. 

Anselm, an Italian like Lanfranc, and his successor in 
the abbey of Bee and the see of Canterbury, revived the 
study of dogmatic theology, which had been almost laid 
aside since the time of St. Augustine. He employed all the 
strength of his powerful mind and all the resources of 
dialectics in demonstrating the truths of Christian dogma. 
Anselm, like Lanfranc, attacked the bold innovators, who 
essayed to subject the dogmas to reasoning founded on the 
logic of Aristotle. Berengar had tried to interjDret the 
mystery of the Eucharist. Roscelinus, about the year 1085, 
attacked that of the Trinity, and scholasticism began its 
subtle discussions with the quarrels between the realists and 
the nominalists.^ 

The Arts in the Church. — The Church also formed and 
directed architects, painters, and sculptors. The eleventh 
century was the first period of the grand architecture of the 
Middle Ages. In the East, Christian architecture had found 
its form as early as the sixth century ; the Greek cross and 
the dome were its distinguishing characteristics. But, on 
the one hand, the construction of a dome with a circular 
base at the centre of a cross, that is, of a dome superimposed 
upon a square, presented great architectural difficulties. 
On the other hand, the religious edifice needed to cover a 
great space in order to shelter the multitude of the faithful 
who came to witness the ceremonies and hear the pastoral 
instructions. The problem was solved by a system of con- 
struction of which St. Sophia, at Constantinople, was the 
most beautiful expression, and of which the characteristic 
feature was the central dome resting on four high arches 
and supported by secondary vaultings. 

In the West, the Christians established themselves at first 
in basilicas, vast quadrangular buildings, intended for mer- 
chants and lawyers, the interior of which was divided into 
three naves by a double colonnade, terminating in a semi- 
circle, the apsis, where the judge sat. The necessities of 
worship soon modified the Iloman basilica. Its ground- 
plan was given the form of the Latin cross. Then the apsi-s 
was crossed by transepts, the centre of which formed the 



EXPOSITION OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 121 

choir. The necessities of the climate, which required that 
the roofs should be sloping, so as not to retain either rain or 
snow, and the difficulty, insurmountable to the barbarous 
people of the tenth century, of rearing the Byzantine dome, 
compelled them to cover the churches with heavy timber- 
work, the thrust of which would have thrown down the 
walls if the latter had not been supported by powerful ex- 
ternal buttresses. Finally, to admit air and light, openings 
were made in the fa9ade and sides by windows terininating 
at the top in a semicircle. The result of these divers in- 
novations was the architecture called Saxon in England, 
Lombard in Italy and Romance in France, where it prevailed 
from the tenth to the thirteenth century. Then the stout 
pillars of the old Carolingian churches grew lighter; the 
low arches rose more boldly, the naves became less sombre, 
the towers more lofty. The use of decorative sculpture com- 
menced, and the pointed arch began to appear. 

Serfs. — In the eleventh century, France was covered with 
a multitude of fiefs, each of which formed a state having 
its own life, laws, and customs, and its ecclesiastical or lay 
chief, almost an independent sovereign. This chief, or 
noble, had not only vassals, but also subjects residmg on 
that part of his fief which he had not subjected to subin- 
feudation. These were, first, the serfs, properly speaking, 
beings entirely at his disposal. "The lord," says Beau- 
manoir, " can take from them all that they have and keep 
them in prison as long as he likes, whether justly or un- 
justly, and he is expected to render account of all this to 
God alone." 

Mainmortables. — Besides these are the mainmortables, 
"more humanely treated," continues the old jurist, "for 
the lord can demand nothing of them, if they do well, be- 
yond their quit-rents and dues which it is their custom to 
pay in lieu of their services." But the mainmortable cannot 
marry without the consent of the lord, and if he take as wife 
a free woman or one born out of the lordship, " he can be 
fined according to the pleasure of the lord." The children 
were equally divided between the two lords. If there were 
only one he belonged to the lord of the mother. At the 
death of the mainmortable all he possessed belonged to his 
lord. 

Villeins. — Of a higher degree were the free under-farm- 
ers, called villeins or roturiers. Their condition was less 



122 FRANCE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. 

precarious. Tliey had preserved tlieir liberty, and they 
held, on condition of an annual rent and corvees, the quit- 
rent lands which the proprietor of the demesne had ceded to 
them, and which they could transmit with all their posses- 
sions to their children. But the quit-rent tenures were in 
the absolute jurisdiction of the proprietors, and the villeins, 
especially those of the rural districts, were subject to a 
power generally unlimited. 

The abandonment of all rights to the lord, but in ex- 
change an obligation resting upon him to defend the weak, — 
such is the principle of feudal society with regard to sub- 
jects. Eoyalty no longer fufilling the office for which it 
was instituted, the people asked from the bishops, counts, 
and barons, that protection which they could not expect 
from the nominal head of the State. 

Dues of the Dependent Classes. — Everything belonged to 
the lord ; but the requirements of the lord were not at first 
oppressive, and for the villeins they were regularly de- 
termined, although, in the Middle Ages, one must always 
take into account the prevalence of arbitrariness and vio- 
lence such as the law would not now permit. 

The obligations of the villeins then were payments in 
kind, such as provisions, the products of the land and the 
farm ; manual labor, such as the corvSes on the lands and 
vineyards of the lords, in the construction of the castle and 
repairing of the roads, etc. In the cities and wherever 
there was a little prosperity, the lord did not fail to exact 
rental in money. The customs or rents in kind and in 
money were regulated ; the tallies were not, and were levied 
arbitrarily. 

There were also whimsical payments which enlivened the 
joyless life of the feudal lord, shut up all the year round 
within the gloomy walls of his castle. Feudalism, wearied 
with itself, sometimes laughed with the poor people, as the 
Church also did, when she authorized the celebration, in the 
churches, of the Feast of the Ass. The powerful, the fortu- 
nate, in those hard, sad times, when misery was everywhere 
and security nowhere, owed their villeins and serfs a few 
moments of forgetfulness and gayety. 

Anarchy and Violence. — The Middle Ages were indeed a 
hard time for the poor. In theory, the principles of the 
feudal relation were excellent ; in reality, they led to anar- 
chy, for the judicial institutions were too defective to pre- 



EXPOSITION OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 123 

vent the bond of vassalage being broken every instant. 
Each man could call his fellow to account with his sword 
for any wrong sustained, or sentence which he considered 
unjust ; war was the usual condition of society. Every hill 
became a fortress ; every plain a battle-field. Cantoned in 
strong fortresses, covered with iron armor, surrounded by 
armed men, the feudal lords loved combats and knew of no 
other means to enrich themselves than pillage. There was 
no trade, for the highways were not safe ; no industry, for 
the lords, masters also of the cities, levied contributions 
upon the burghers as soon as they showed any signs of 
opulence. The clergy, the guardians of moral law, found 
themselves not able to forbid violence, but only to regulate 
it, by establishing the truce of God, which forbade killing or 
robbery from Wednesday evening to Monday morning. 

Frightful Misery ; a Famine in the Eleventh Century. — 
Upon whom did the weight of all these feudal miseries 
fall ? Not extremely destructive to the nobles covered with 
iron, they were fatal to the serfs, unprovided with defen- 
sive armor. At Brenneville, where the two kings of France 
and England fought a battle, 900 knights were engaged and 
only three were left on the field. The lord captured, 
another calamity arose ; his ransom must be paid. But 
who would pay for the burned hut and harvest of the poor 
laborer ? Who would heal his wounds ? Who would feed 
his widow and orphans ? 

William, archbishop of Tyre, one of the historians of the 
crusades, thus paints these dreadful times : " There was 
no security for property ; a man's being repvited to be rich 
was sufficient reason for throwing him into prison, keeping 
him in chains, and subjecting him to cruel tortures. Rob- 
bers, girt with swords, infested the highways, started from 
ambushes, and spared neither strangers nor men devoted to 
the service of God. ISTeither cities nor fortresses were ex- 
empt from these calamities ; assassins rendered their streets 
and places dangerous for men of wealth." 

Frequent famines caused intense sufferings, insomuch 
that not a few even resorted to cannibalism, and children 
and travellers were slain to satisfy the hunger of the 
peasants. At the present day, improved means of com- 
mxinication and the spirit of order and foresight enable us 
to combat such calamities, so that they produce but little 
suffering, and what is still better they do not unsettle pub- 



124 FRANCE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. 

lie morality. Formerly there was nothing to guard, against 
the inclemencies of the seasons. Every poor harvest brought 
about a scarcity, every scarcity a famine, and with famine 
came crimes and atrocities. During the seventy years be- 
tween 970 and 1040 there were forty-eight years of famine 
or epidemic. 

Some Fortunate Results. — But meanwhile the general prog- 
ress of civilization was by no means completely suspended. 
In the Church, thought revived, and in the lay society, poetry 
appeared. There was even progress in morality, at least in 
the highest classes. In the isolation in which each man 
lived, exposed, to every peril, the soul strengthened itself 
to endurance. The feeling of the dignity of man, which 
despotism had destroyed, was restored; and that society 
which shed blood with such deplorable facility, bequeathed 
to modern times the sentiment of honor. 

Another fortunate consequence was the reorganization 
of the family. In the ancient cities, a man lived outside 
of his own house, in the fields or the forum. In feudal 
society, where men lived in isolation, the father was brought 
nearer to his family. The Church, which had caused these 
rude soldiers to kneel at the feet of a virgin, which made 
them respect in the mother of the Saviour all the virtues 
of women, softened the ferocious spirit of warriors and 
prepared them to appreciate the charm of the finer mind 
and more delicate sentiments of womankind. Woman then 
took her place in the family and in society ; she even be- 
came the object of a worship which called into existence 
the new sentiments of chivalry. 

Outside of the family, the State was doubtless very ill or- 
ganized. Yet we ought to take notice of the political theory 
which that society represented. If the serf had no rights, 
the vassal had, and very important ones. The feudal bond 
was entered into only on conditions thoroughly understood 
and accepted by him in advance. New conditions could be 
imj)Osed upon him only with his consent. Hence came those 
great and forcible maxims of public right which in spite 
of a thousand violations have come down to us. Eo tax 
could be exacted except with tlie express consent of the 
tax-payers ; no law was of any value if it was not accepted 
by those wlio would owe obedience to it or by tlieir repre- 
sentatives ; no sentence was lawful unless rendered by the 
peers of the accused. As a giiarantee of his rights, the 



EXPOSITION OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 125 

vassal had the right to break the tie of vassalage by giving 
back his fief, or to reply by war to any denial of justice on the 
part of his suzerain. This right of armed resistance made 
society weak, but it made the individual exceedingly strong. 
Before even thinking of constituting the State intelligently, 
it was necessary to elevate the individual and the family ; 
this double task was the work of the Middle Ages. 

The Church worked at it energetically : by establishing 
the sanctity of marriage, even for the serf; by preaching 
the equality of all men in the eyes of God ; by proclaiming';, 
through its maintenance of the principle of election, the 
rights of intelligence in the face of the feudal world which 
recognized only the rights of blood ; by raising to the chair 
of St. Peter a serf like Adrian IV., or the son of a poor 
carpenter like Gregory VII. 



126 EXTERNAL ENTERPRISES. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

EXTERNAL ENTERPRISES IN THE SECOND HALF OP THE 
ELEVENTH CENTURY. 

Pilgrimages. — The eleventh century was the period of 
the most ardent faith among the people. Everywhere piety 
found relics of forgotten saints, and monasteries were raised 
over their tombs. Upon the announcement of some pious 
discovery, the people gathered in throngs from all the 
neighboring provinces. By degrees they were encouraged 
to go farther still; to St. Martin of Tours on the Loire, to 
St. James (Santiago) of Comx^ostella in Galicia, to Monte 
Cassino in Italy, to the tombs of the apostles at Eome. 
From thence to Jerusalem there was only the sea to cross. 
It was a perilous journey, but faith took no account of perils. 
As early as the days of king Henry, " an innumerable crowd 
came from the ends of the world to visit the holy sepulchre 
at Jerusalem." Fulk Nerra, Count of Anjou, went thither 
three times. Robert the Magnificent, Duke of Normandy, 
also made this pilgrimage, and died at Nice (1035). The 
counts of Barcelona, Flanders, and Verdun, attempted the 
voyage and succeeded. In 1054, the bishop of Cambrai set 
out with 3000 Flemings ; in 1067, four Germa,n bishops, 
with 7000 men. 

Effects of the Reforms in the Church by Gregory VII. — 
The world was thus setting itself in motion, when Gregory 
VII. gave it a fresh impulse which shook the Church and, 
through her, lay society also. In the eleventh century the 
Church was very rich ; many of her members assumed the 
habits of feudal lords. Discipline was as lax as manners 
and morals. Celibacy was no longer strictly observed ; and 
it appears that the offices of the Church were about to 
become hereditary, as those of the State had already become. 

Hildebrand, who had been made Pope under the name of 
Gregory VII., in 1073, saved the Church from this danger. 
He brought the clergy back to the exercise of the virtues of 
abstinence and sacrifice, and endeavored to place it above 



EXTERNAL ENTERPRISES. 127 

the influence of temporal power. In order to bring it again 
under the sole authority of the see of Rome, he desired that, 
when granting spiritual consecration to a bishop, the Pope 
should bestow upon him at the same time the investiture 
of the lands pertaining to his Church. Although he failed 
in this part of his great undertaking, yet the Holy See 
acquired new life through his efforts, the Church a greater 
influence over the people and the affairs of the world. She 
owed it to Gregory YII, that she was able to accomplish one 
of the most important events of the Middle Ages, — the 
changing of pilgrimages into crusades. 

Conquest of Southern Italy by the Normans (1083-1130). — 
First there were military expeditions undertaken under 
the influence of the Holy See. For instance, some JSTorman 
pilgrims, who came to Eome about the year 1016, were 
employed by the Pope against the Greeks who were attack- 
ing Benevento. Others, returning from Jerusalem, aided 
the inhabitants of Salerno to drive away the Saracens who 
were besieging them. The reports of their success attracted 
other ISTormans, who soon became masters of the country. 
Pope Leo IX. marched against them with an army of Ger- 
mans. They took him prisoner, but soon declared them- 
selves his vassals, and received from him in fief all that 
they had conquered (1053). This constituted the Duchy of 
Apulia, to which the ISTormans soon added Sicily. A Nor- 
man dynasty, having for its chiefs Robert Guiscard and 
Roger, sons of a gentleman of Coutances, reigned at Naples. 

Conquest of England by the Normans (1066) . — Another 
Norman dynasty seated itself at the same time on the 
throne of England. Edward the Confessor, who had been 
restored to that throne on the expulsion of the Danish line, 
showed great favor to the Normans, among whom he had 
lived during his exile. When William, Duke of Normandy, 
went to visit the Anglo-Saxon king, he saw Normans every- 
where ; it seemed to him that it would be an easy matter to 
exchange his crown of duke for that of king. But the 
Saxons forced Edward to send away his dangerous friend 
from across the channel, and the Englishman Harold 
resumed all his influence at court and throughout the 
coimtry. 

We are told that Harold, being shipwrecked on the coast 
of Normandy, was forced by William to swear that he 
would support the latter's claim to the English throne. 



128 EXTERNAL ENTERPRISES 

Harold's return was followed by the death of Edward. The 
Witenagemot, or great national council, bestowed the crown 
upon him. William immediately sent to remind him of his 
promise. Harold replied that having been extorted from 
him by force it was of no value, and that, besides, the 
bestowal of the crown belonged to the English people. Wil- 
liam treated him as a usurper, as a sacrilegious person, and 
appealed to the court of Rome. Hildebrand caused Harold 
to be excommunicated, and the crown of England to be given 
to William. The duke then published his ban of war. 
A crowd of adventurers hastened to join him, and an army 
of 60,000 men set out in September, 1066. They disem- 
barked at Pevensey, in the county of Sussex. Harold, who 
had just repelled a Norwegian invasion on the coasts of 
Yorkshire, came up with all haste ; but he was conquered 
and killed at the battle of Hastings (1066), after having 
fought valiantly. The English nationality succumbed. 
William divided the country among all those who had fol- 
lowed him, keeping the best part for himself. 

French customs, French civilization, the French language, 
and French feudal institutions were planted in England. But 
France paid dearly for this conquest made by^her arms, her 
manners, and her idiom. The dukes of Norfaandy, on be- 
coming kings of England, possessed a power which long 
held the French kings in check. 

Conquest of Portugal by a French Prince (1095). — The 
infidels were in Sicily and at Jerusalem; they were still 
nearer and more threatening in Spain. A great number of 
knights crossed the mountains and assisted Spain to drive 
the Arabs down into Andalusia. Among them came, towards 
the end of the eleventh century, two princes, Raymond, 
Count of Toulouse, and Henry, fourth son of the Duke of 
Burgundy. In reward for their services, the king of Castile 
gave them his two daughters in marriage, and Henry re- 
ceived a territory which extended from the Miuho to the 
Mondego (1095). He undertook to enlarge his small domain 
at the expense of the infidels. He gained seventeen victories 
over them, and gloriously established the independence of 
Portugal, over which his descendants have reigned until 
the present day. 




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THE FIRST CRUSADE. 129 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE FIRST CRUSADE. 
(1095-1099 A.D.) 

Peter the Hermit and the Council of Clermont. — Jerusalem 

had just fallen into the hands of a horde of savage Turks, 
and instead of the tolerance which the caliphs of Bagdad 
and Cairo had shown towards the pilgrims, the latter were 
now loaded with outrages. Peter the Hermit made France 
resound with the recital of these calamities, and the people 
everywhere, seized with a pious enthusiasm, took np arms 
for the purpose of delivering the tomb of Christ from the 
infidels. The council of Clermont assembled in 1095, under 
the presidency of the French Pope. Urban II. preached 
the crusade. The number of those who, in that and the fol- 
lowing year, aihxed to their breasts the cross of red cloth, 
the symbol of their engagement in this holy enterprise, 
amounted to more than a million. 

Departure of the First Crusaders (1096). — Men came from 
the most remote countries. The poor, the most eager, con- 
fiding in God alone, were the first to set out, with the cry 
of " God wills it ! " without preparations, almost without 
arms. Women, children, old men, accompanied their hus- 
bands, their fathers, and their sons. A van-guard of 15,000 
ill-armed men led the way, under the command of a poor 
Norman knight, Walter the Penniless. Peter the Hermit 
followed with 100,000 men. A third troop brought up the 
rear. They passed through Germany, slaying the Jews 
whom they met in the way, pillaging everywhere in order 
to procure food, and accustoming themselves to violence. 
In Hungary their disorderliness was such that the people 
took up arms and drove the crusaders into Thrace, after 
having killed a large number of them. Only a small part 
of them reached Constantinople. The Emperor Alexis, in 
order to get rid of such auxiliaries, hastened to send them 
into Asia. They all fell by the sabre of the Turks, in the 
plain of Nicaea. 



130 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

Departure of the Second Army of the Crusaders (1096) . — 

Meanwhile the nobles were taking up arms and organizing, 
and set oiit at last, with an army numbering, it is said, 
100,000 knights and 600,000 infantry, on different routes 
and under different chieftains. The French of the North 
and the Lorrainers went by way of Germany and Hungary, 
under command of Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon and lower 
Lorraine, the bravest, the strongest, the most pious of the 
crusaders, and his two brothers. The French of the South, 
with the rich and powerful Count of Toulouse, crossed the 
Alps, and marching through Dalmatia and Slavonia, reached 
Thrace. The Duke of Normandy, the counts of Blois, 
Manders and Vermandois, joined the Normans of Italy, 
Bohemond, Prince of Tarento, and his cousin Tancred, next 
to Godfrey the most perfect knight of his time : and all 
together crossed the Adriatic and passed through Greece 
and Macedonia. 

The Crusaders at Constantinople and in Asia Minor (1097). 
— The general rendezvous was at Constantinople. The 
Emperor trembled lest they should wish to begin their 
crusade there by seizing upon the great city. Some of 
them, indeed, thought of doing so, but Godfrey of Bouillon 
opposed it. Alexis, however, was not reassured until he 
had sent into Asia the last one of these warriors. 

On the point of taking Nicaea they were defrauded of it 
by the Greeks. In crossing Asia Minor, they endured 
frightful sufferings. The light Turkish squadrons of the 
sultan of Iconium circled around them constantly, harass- 
ing them and cutting off the stragglers. When the sultan 
believed them to be sufficiently weakened and discouraged, 
he came with an immense body of cavalry, to give them 
battle in the plain of Dorylaeum in Phrygia. The action 
was for some time uncertain, when the arrival of Godfrey 
of Bouillon and a large corps of cavalry forced the Turks 
to flee. 

The Crusaders at Antioch (1098). — After endiiring still 
further sufferings they arrived, in October, 1097, before the 
great city of Antioch, which was defended by a strong wall 
and a garrison of 20,000 men. The crusaders now num- 
bered not more than 300,000. They remained seven months 
in front of the place. Finally they were enabled by treach- 
ery to scale the walls, and dashed into the city with cries of 
" God wills it ! " Ten thousand persons were killed. The 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 131 

crusaders compensated themselves for their long privation 
by excesses which thinned their ranks ; and "vvere then in 
turn besieged in the captured city by an innumerable multi- 
tude of Turks. Soon pestilence and famine took possession 
of the city. A great many of the crusaders, despairing of 
ever reaching Jerusalem, left the army, to return to Europe. 
Others, sustained by their courage, remained ; their faith 
saved them. The lance which pierced the side of Christ 
having been miraculously discovered, the crusaders were 
filled with enthusiasm; they marched against the Turks 
and cut their army to pieces. 

Capture of Jerusalem (1099). — When after long delays 
they finally set out from Antioch, there were scarcely more 
than 50,000 of them left. Enthusiasm increased by de- 
gi-ees as they approached the holy city. Finally they 
reached the top of the last hill, and Jerusalem appeared be- 
fore them. Tears streamed from their eyes. They uttered 
cries of " Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! God wills it ! God wills 
it ! " stretched out their arms to it, and threw themselves 
on their knees, kissing the earth. 

Jerusalem was defended by the Eatimite caliph of Cairo, 
who had recently taken it from the Turks. The crusaders 
suffered still more before these walls. Finally on the 14th 
of July, 1099, at the break of day, a general assault was 
made. But it was not until the next day that the crusaders 
succeeded in taking the city. Tancred and Godfrey were 
the first to scale the walls. They were still obliged to fight 
in the streets and force the mosque of Omar, where the 
Moslems were defending themselves. Blood flowed in tor- 
rents. The battle over, the chiefs and all the people, laying 
aside their arms, changed their clothing, washed their hands, 
and, with bare feet and singing sacred songs with ardent 
devotion, went to visit the sacred places. 

Foundation of a French Kingdom in Palestine (1099). — In 
order to ensure the conquest, it Avas necessary to organize 
it and give it a head. Godfrey of Bouillon was proclaimed 
king. He consented only to assume the title of Defender 
and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre, refusing "to wear a crown 
•of gold, when the King of kings had worn a crown of 
thorns." The victory of Ascalon, which he won a short 
time after, over an Egyptian army, ensured the conquest to 
the crusaders. But already the Christians were in haste to 
return to their own firesides ; only 300 knights were left 



132 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

with Godfrey at Jerusalem. Thus left to itself, the little 
kingdom was organized and constituted according to the 
principles of feudalism transported into Asia. The laws, 
language, and manners of France were preserved in it. Its 
code was the assizes of Jerusalem, in which we find a com- 
plete representation of the feudal regime. Fiefs were es- 
tablished; the principalities of Edessa and Antioch, the 
county of Tripoli and the marquisate of Tyre ; the lord- 
ships of Kablous, Jaffa, Ramla, and Tiberias. 

Part taken by France in the Crusades. — This great move- 
ment, which continued for a century and a half, and which 
led away all the people of Europe, emanated from France. 
The French indeed formed, almost alone, the first crusade. 
They shared the second (1147) with the Germans, the third 
(1190) with the English, the fourth (1202) with the Vene- 
tians. The fifth (1217) and the sixth (1228) were unim- 
portant. The seventh (1248) and the eighth (1270) were 
exclusively French. And at the present day in the East, all 
Christians, no matter what language they speak, are known 
as Franks. 

General Results of the Crusades. — Thus, in the eleventh 
century the French, like their Celtic ancestors, began a 
great movement of national expansion. The French went 
to England and Naples only to seek their fortunes. In 
Spain and in the East, they fought and died for their 
faith. The sight of these millions of men, rising and 
eagerly hastening to the conquest of a tomb, is one of the 
grandest spectacles ever presented to the world. Very few 
of them ever returned. The crusaders did not attain their 
end ; Jerusalem, delivered for a moment, fell again into the 
power of the infidels. But in those countries whence the 
crusaders departed, and in the minds of those men and their 
contemporaries, what changes ! Previously they had lived 
apart and as enemies ; the crusades diminished isolation and 
divisions. The crusaders learned to recognize each other 
as brothers in Jesus Christ ; the men of the same country- 
to look upon each other as members of the same family. 
The French of the North drew near to the French of the 
South; national fraternity was found on the road to 
Jerusalem. 

At Clermont Urban II. had not preached the crusade for 
the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre alone, but also with 
a view of putting an end to the curse of private war. The 



THE FIRST CRUSADE. 133 

brief cessation of private wars gave the world a respite and 
favored the expansion of two new powers, — royalty and 
the communes, — both of which desired the pnblic peace. 

Results of Commerce and Industry. — These great expedi- 
tions also opened the way to commerce, which had been 
closed since the time of the invasions. The East became 
again accessible to merchants from the West. Industry in 
its turn was aroused, and this movement, once set on foot, 
never stopped. Mechanics increased in number, as well as 
merchants. For the protection of their different industries 
they formed guilds, and by degrees accumulated much 
wealth. A new element of strength was thus found ; per- 
sonal property, which henceforth increased as over against 
real property, elevated the burgesses to an equality with the 
nobility. 

Institution of Military Orders ; Armorial Bearings. — The 
crusades were the cause of some new institutions, especially 
the military orders of the Hospitallers and the Templars. In 
these great armies of crusaders, means of recognition were 
necessary ; armorial bearings were invented and multiplied, 
and since the thirteenth century have descended from father 
to son. These armorial bearings gave rise to the complicated 
language and science of heraldry. Family names were also 
introduced about this x^eriod. 

Chivalry. — Another product of the age was the institu- 
tion of chivalry. " From the early age of seven years the 
future knight was taken out of the hands of women and 
confided to the care of some valiant baron who set him an 
example of knightly virtues. Until he was fourteen he 
accompanied the lord and lady of the castle as page. He 
followed them to the chase and practised all manner of 
manly and warlike exercises. These, with the example of 
some lord who was held up as a model of knighthood, the 
great exploits of arms and love which were related in the 
long winter evenings in the hall, and sometimes the trouba- 
dour's songs of Charlemagne and Arthur, constituted the 
moral and intellectual education which the young man 
received. 

"At fifteen he became a squire. The squire accompanied 
the lord and lady on horseback, served the lord at table, or 
carried his lance and his various pieces of armor. The 
ideas of the period ennobled these domestic services. The 
initiation of the squire was consecrated by religious services. 



134 THE FIRST CRUSADE. 

His physical, military, and moral education was continued 
by means of violent exercises. Covered witli a heavy 
armor, he leaped ditches and scaled walls, and the legends 
of chivalry developed more and more in his mind the model 
of chivalrous courage and virtue. The precepts of the 
Christian religion were also deeply impressed upon the 
future knight, and imbued him with its principles. At 
seventeen the squire often went off on distant expeditions 
under a vow of accomplishing some feat of prowess before 
receiving the order of knighthood. 

" Pinally, when he was twenty-one years old and seemed 
worthy on account of his bravery to be made a knight, he 
prepared himself for this initiation by symbolical ceremo- 
nies. The bath, a symbol of purity of body and mind, the 
watching of his arms through the night, the confession, the 
communion, preceded the reception of the new knight. 
Dressed in garments of white linen, another symbol of 
moral purity, he was led to the altar by two tried knights. 
A priest said mass and blessed the sword. The lord who 
was to arm the new knight struck him with the blade of the 
sword, saying to him : ' I dub thee knight, in the name of 
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.' He made him 
swear to consecrate his arms to the defence of the weak and 
the oppressed; then he embraced him and girded on his 
sword. The two knights clothed the new knight with the 
different pieces of armor, and fastened on his gilded spurs, 
the distinctive sign of the knightly dignity. The ceremony 
was often ended by a tournament " (Ch^ruel). 



THE RURAL CLASSES AND THE COMMUNES. 135 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE RURAL CLASSES, THE URBAN POPULATION AND THE 
COMMUNES. — LOUIS VL 

(1108-1137 A.D,) 

Parishes and Village Communities. — The gradual rise of 
the lower orders next claims attention. In the eighth cen- 
tury, the serfs were still alienable apart from the land. 
But two centuries later we see them all living in families. 
Their cabins and the surrounding land have become their 
heritage. The family spirit led to the spirit of association. 
When these families of serfs were gathered together in a 
favorable spot, and the lord was not too harsh, they multi- 
plied and became a village. Finally, perhaps, they built a 
church, and the bishop formed a new parish. This parish 
existed at first only as an ecclesiastical division, but it was 
soon utilized for purposes of administration. The Cluirch 
bestowed on the rural communities their first organization ; 
a second was given when the intendant of the lord took some 
of the villeins to serve him as assessors, to assist him in 
judgment. For the majority of the villages things con- 
tinued in this condition for a long time ; but those which 
had increased so far as to become towns, in which there was 
property to be guarded against exaction, were animated, in 
the eleventh century, by new desires. The serfs wished to 
restrain the rights of their lord over their land and their 
persons. Communal life grew until, in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, the village communities had definite resources and 
obligations. 

Ancient Cities ; Peasant Insurrections. — The Eoman Em- 
pire had left on the soil of Gaul a great number of cities 
which remained, in the midst of the general confusion, cen- 
tres of industry and commerce. A few of them, particu- 
larly in the South, retained their municipal organization, 
their senates, and even enlarged the jurisdiction of their 
popularly elected magistrates. Among all of them the 



136 THE RURAL CLASSES AND THE COMMUNES. 

memory of the ancient liberties was preserved ; it revived 
with, energy when oppression reached its height. 

As early as the year 997 the villeins of Normandy, under 
king Eobert, had prepared for a general revolt. Proclaim- 
ing the equality of all men, they bound themselves by an 
oath, and deputies from all the districts united in a general 
assembly. But the plot was^noised about, and the chiefs, 
surprised by the Count of Evreux and his knights, were 
atrociously tortured. In 1024 the Breton peasants revolted. 
The struggle Avas a desperate one. Many noblemen per- 
ished ; but the insurrection was drowned in the blood of the 
peasants. 

The Truce of God. — At the end of the eleventh century 
the Church made a great effort to protect the clergy and the 
rural population against the violence of the perpetual wars 
carried on by the lords. In 1095 the council of Clermont, 
which preached the crusade, decreed at the same time the 
peace of God. It ordered that clnirches, cemeteries, oxen, 
asses, cows, plow-horses, sheep and lambs, provosts and 
mayors of villages with their households, collectors of 
tithes, canons, the clergy, monks, and travellers should 
be allowed a perpetual peace. For other places and other 
persons there was to be a truce from Wednesday at sunset 
till Monday at sunrise, also from the first day of Advent 
to the octave of Epiphany, from the first day of Lent to the 
octave of Pentecost. The violator of the peace was to be 
punished by excommunication and by an exile of seven 
years, and his castle was to be demolished. 

The provincial council of Rouen prescribed that all young 
men from the age of twelve up should swear to maintain 
the truce, and formed associations for its maintenance. 
More was accomplished toward bestowing peace upon France 
where the king imposed his truce, the quarantaine le roi. 
This was better observed than the truce of God. The 
parishes assisted in the maintenance of it. The burgess 
communities accompanied the king to siege and battle. The 
parochial militia followed Louis VI. to the assault upon 
the dens of robbers. The enclosure of the communes was 
sometimes designated by the words confinia pads, and the 
men of the commune as the men of the peace. 

The Communes. — In the second half of the eleventh cen- 
tury sufficient property had been accumulated in the cities 
to cause the inhabitants to wish to protect themselves from 



THE RURAL CLASSES AND THE COMMUNES. 137 

feudal rapacity, by causing their right to manage their own 
affairs, througli their own elected magistrates, to be recog- 
nized. Some, taking advantage of the necessities of the 
nobles, who were eager to set out upon the crusade, bought 
concessions ; others obtained them by force ; others still, who 
had preserved since the time of the E,omans their local and 
elective administration, had their privileges increased. An 
earnest desire for freedom animated all the cities of Nor- 
thern France. Le Mans (1066), then Cambrai (1076), gave 
the signal, followed by Noyon, Beauvais, St. Quentin, Laon, 
Amiens, and Soissons, etc., which all extorted communal 
charters from their lords, who were for the most part 
ecclesiastics. 

For an instance, the charter of Laon granted to the com- 
mune an elective magistracy, composed of a mayor and 
twelve sworn men, who had the right to assemble the people 
by the ringing of the bell, to judge crimes committed in the 
city and the suburbs, and to have their sentences executed. 
The bishop sold his consent; then swore to respect the 
privileges of the new commune. The burgesses, in order to 
have every security, bought also a conformation by Louis VI. 

The efforts of the communes failed of permanent success, 
because they remained isolated, because each city thought 
only of establishing its own special liberties ; and royalty, 
when in the fourteenth century it became all-powerful, tore 
up the charters of the communes. But they had been suffi- 
ciently numerous to enable a new class to be formed under 
their protection. When the communes disappeared, the 
third estate appeared. 

Villes de Bourgeoisie. — It was not in the commune alone 
that the third estate came into existence; it was formed 
also in the villes de bourgeoisie. Settlers gathered around 
the great walls of the castle. The lord was interested in 
increasing their number, in order to increase his revenues 
and even his military forces. Hence he endeavored to 
attract the peasants by the privileges which he granted on 
his land. This was the origin of so many cities and towns 
which bear the name of Villeneuve. He granted in advance 
and caused to be published far and wide a charter like the 
following : 

" I, Henry, Count of Troyes, make known to all present 
and to come, that I have established the customs herein 
announced for the inhabitants of my new town between 



138 THE RURAL CLASSES AND THE COMMUNES. 

the roadways of tlie bridges of Pugny. Every man living in 
the aforesaid town shall pay each year twelve pence and 
two bushels of hay for the price of his house ; and if he 
wishes to have a portion of land or of meadow he shall 
give a rent of fourpence an acre. The houses, vineyards, 
and meadows shall be vendible or alienable at the will of the 
purchaser. (Thus the villein became a proprietor.) The 
men residing in the aforesaid town shall neither join the 
army nor go upon any expedition unless I am at their head. 
I grant them, besides, the right to have six echevins, who 
shall administer the common affairs of the city, and assist 
my provost in his pleas. I forbid any lord, knight, or other 
person, to carry away from the town any of the new in- 
habitants, for any reason whatever, unless the latter be his 
body servant or owe him arrears of taxes. Given at Provins, 
in the year of the Incarnation 1175." 

Ancient cities also obtained similar privileges to those of 
the new towns, by remaining, likewise, in subjection to the 
provost of the lord or of the king. This occurred principally 
in the royal domain. In this category are Orleans and Paris, 
which in spite of their antiquity appear not to have preserved 
the Roman municipal regime, but to have received all their 
franchises from the Middle Ages and the kings. The dif- 
ference between the communes and the vUles de bourgeoisie 
is, that the former had the right to administer justice and 
the latter had not. In the latter the provost of the lord or 
the king retained the jurisdiction. For instance, Orleans 
and Paris were never communes, but their inhabitants had 
securities for person and property, and privileges for com- 
merce, and these advantages sufficed to attract to the villes 
de bourgeoisie a numerous population. 

Individual Enfranchisements. — The condition of the serf 
was very painful. Nevertheless, custom accorded him the 
right to dispose of his pecuUum, which gave him, in a sense, 
some rights of property. Serfs had no real rights over the 
land they acquired; they could not alienate it without the 
consent of the lord. If they had no direct heirs, the lord 
inherited it ; he deducted in every case of succession a cer- 
tain portion, the mortuarium ; but direct heirs shared the 
heritage of their fathers, in equal parts. 

This peculi%im, or money of his own, the serf employed in 
purchasing certain rights, the loss of which bore hard upon 
him, as for instance the right to take a wife outside of the 



THE RURAL CLASSES AND THE COMMUNES. 139 

lordship. He used it also to purchase his freedom. It 
appears that the eiifranchiseinents were begun first by the 
Church. She had first defended the life of the serf against 
the violence of his lord, and also the indissolubility of his 
marriage. She uttered severe denunciations against the 
oppression of unjust masters. Abbot Suger, who had him- 
self sprung from this oppressed class, freed the serfs of 
St, Denis, and Louis VI., whose minister he was, followed 
his example. 

Extent of the Royal Domain at the Accession of Louis VI. 
— The royal domain had greatly diminished since the times 
of Hugh Capet. Philip L possessed at his death only the 
counties of Paris, Melun, Etampes, Orleans, and Sens ; nor 
did he possess a clear passage from one of these cities to the 
other. On all sides the domains of powerful barons came 
close to Paris. In the North the king still had, as Duke 
of Prance, powerful vassals in the counts of Ponthieu, 
Amiens, Soissons, Clermont, Beauvaisis, Valois and Verman- 
dois. South of the Loire, the king had just bought the 
viscounty of Bourges, and the other lords of Berry, the 
prince of D^ols and the sire of Bourbon, did direct homage 
to him. 

Grand Vassals of the Crown. — Around the royal domain 
extended vast feudal principalities, the possessors of which 
rivalled the king in wealth and power. In the North there 
was the Count of Flanders ; in the West the Duke of Nor- 
mandy and the Du.ke of Brittany ; in the Southwest the 
Count of Anjou; in the East the Count of Champagne; and 
in the Southeast the Duke of Biirgundy. Farther away, to 
the south of the Loire, were the dukes of Aquitaine and 
Gascony, and the counts of Toulouse and Barcelona with 
their innumerable vassals. The clergy also occupied an 
important place in the feudal hierarchy. Its heads were 
dukes, counts, and lords, having all the regal rights exercised 
by other suzerains, so that with the exception of five or six 
cities possessed by the king, the whole of France belonged 
to lords, either lay or ecclesiastical, great or small. But this 
royalty, though so feeble, had on its side those memories of 
power, jiistice, national unity, and public order which were 
associated with its title ; and when a brave and active prince 
should succeed to it, he would be able to cause his rights to 
be recognized. 

Activity of Louis VI. — -While the French nation was 



140 THE RURAL CLASSES AND THE COMMUNES. 

crossing all its borders at once to conquer England, Naples, 
and Jerusalem, and to found a kingdom in Spain, the in- 
dolent Philip I. slept upon his throne. The people began 
to be irritated by this inertia of the Capetians. " It is the 
duty of kings," said Suger, " to repress, by their power and 
the innate right of their office, the audacity of the nobles 
who rend the State by ceaseless wars, desolate the poor and 
destroy the churches." Louis VI. was the sort of king 
demanded by Suger. Always on horseback, lance in hand, 
he constantly fought against the nobles who plundered 
travellers, or pillaged the property of the churches, and 
succeeded in restoring some degree of order and security in 
his narrow domain of the lle-de-France. All the weak, 
all the oppressed, gathered around the protecting standard 
which he raised. The clergy put their soldiery at his 
service. He obtained fresh allies by intervening in the 
communal revolution. 

His Intervention in the Communal Revolution. — The com- 
munes were first established in the episcopal or abbatical 
cities of the North of France. Louis VI., however, played 
a part in this revolution. Himself engaged in a contest 
with the same enemy, he purposely aided this insurrec- 
tion which secured allies for him in the very midst of 
those whom he was fighting. He confirmed eight char- 
ters of communes ; that is, he granted the royal sanction and 
guaranty to the treaties of peace concluded between the 
rebel subjects and their lords, which secured the concessions 
obtained by the subjects. This wise policy immediately 
gave great power to the king, because the communes hence- 
forth regarded him as their patron. From that time, in 
fact, may be dated the intense enthusiasm of the French 
people for their king. Yet though Louis the Fat favored 
the establishment of communes on the estates of the lords, 
he did not allow a single one on his own domains. 

But often when, in his own struggles against the robber 
barons, the warriors and the knights abandoned him, the 
militia of the churches and the communes flocked to his 
support. His efforts to protect the weak and discipline 
feudal society were rewarded. In his war against Henry I., 
king of England, the communal militia rallied around his 
banner, and at the report of a proposed attack by the 
Emperor of Germany, a numerous army of burgesses and 
vassals held itself in readiness to defend him. 



THE RURAL CLASSES AND THE COMMUNES. 141 

Relations with Henry I., King of England. — In the war 

against Henry I., Louis had proposed to assure JSTormandy 
to William Clito, a nephew of the English king. This was 
a wise project, the success of which would have averted a 
danger which constantly threatened the crown of France, 
so long as England was united to the duchy of Normandy ; 
but Louis was defeated at Brenneville (1119). The Eng- 
lish king, however, fighting his suzerain, dared not carry 
the war to extremes, not wishing to set an example of re- 
bellion of vassal against lord. 

A few days after, a terrible afl&iction befell King Henry. 
He embarked at Honfleur, to return to England. His only 
son, and a brilliant retinue of youthful nobility, followed 
him in the ill-fated White Ship. In the channel the White 
Ship struck upon a rock, and sank with all on board save 
one man. 

Union of Normandy, England, and Anjou. — This misfor- 
tune was fatal also to France. Henry had remaining only 
one daughter, Matilda ; he declared her his heiress. Matilda 
was the widow of the Emperor Henry V. In 1127 she was 
married a second time to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of 
Anjou. Hitherto the kings of France had been able to 
rely upon the support of Anjou against Normandy. The 
marriage of Matilda put an end to that policy, and extended 
the Anglo-Norman domination to the Loire. Another union, 
that of Henry, son of Matilda, with Eleanor of Guienne, 
carried it to the Pyrenees. 

Murder of the Count of Flanders (1127). — Flanders was 
already covered with busy cities, and her burgesses, numer- 
ous and proud, held in light esteem the social distinctions 
which elsewhere were of so much importance. Many serfs 
had crept into their ranks and had acquired wealth and 
power. In 1127 the most prominent personage in the prov- 
ince, next to the count, was a serf, Berthold, provost of the 
chapter of St. Donatian at Bruges. But Count Charles the 
Good, a pious man, beloved by the poor, but attached to 
the old order of things, caused an examination to be made 
throughout his county, to ascertain the condition of all per- 
sons, in order to remand to servitude all those who had not 
been legally set free. The provost and all his followers, thus 
directly threatened, conspired to assassinate the count, and 
slew him in the church of St. Donatian. This murder 
caused a great commotion. All the chivalry of the country 



142 THE RURAL CLASSES AND THE COMMUNES. 

took up arms against the traitors, who, besieged in the castle 
of Bruges, and afterwards in the very church where the 
murder was committed, defended themselves with despera- 
tion. King Louis, the count's suzerain, himself came to 
attack them there and compelled them to surrender. The 
ringleaders were put to death with frightful tortures. But 
the friends and relatives of the provost aroused G-hent, 
Lille, Furnes and Alost, and the influence of Louis VI. in 
Flanders proved but short-lived. 

Influence of Louis VI. in the South. — Louis succeeded 
better in the South. His influence and even his authority 
were felt there. The bishop of Clermont, being at war with 
the Count of Auvergne, sought the aid of the king, who 
crossed the Loire with a numerous army, and pushed the 
war so vigorously that the Duke of Aquitaine came himself 
to ask pardon for his vassal (1126). Two lords contended 
for the Bourbonnais. Louis decided the question between 
them, and one of them refusing to accept his decision, he by 
force of arms compelled him to accept it. Thus the king, 
as a reward for having made himself " a great justice of the 
peace " in times of trouble and violence, saw the authority 
which had been lost return to him little by little. 

Three Popes in France. — The quarrel concerning Investi- 
tures, or the rivalry between the Holy See and the Empire, 
begun with Gregory VII., had not ended, and the Popes, 
driven from Kome by the arms and intrigues of the Em- 
peror, sought refuge and assistance in France. Gelasius II. 
was elected then, and in 1119 assembled a,t Eheims, for the 
purpose of ending this great debate, a council by which 
canons were promulgated against simoniacs, and the mar- 
riage of the clergy again forbidden, the truce of God con- 
firmed, and the licentious lives of several princes condemned. 
Three years after, the negotiations commenced by Calixtus 
II. at Rheims with the Emperor ended in the concordat of 
Worms, the first of those difficult treaties of peace which 
have regulated the relations between the temporal and the 
spiritual power. 

In 1130 Innocent II., forced to leave Eome to a rival 
Pope, took refuge in France. Louis the Fat assembled at 
!fitampes a council which examined into the pretensions of 
the two rivals, and, on the proposition of Bernard, declared 
for Innocent IT. France thus became the asylum of pon- 
tiffs, and the place where the great affairs of the Church 



THE RURAL CLASSES AND THE COMMUNES. 143 

were discussed. Royalty necessarily gained importance by 
thus playing the part of protector of the Popes. 

Abelard. — The disputes between the realists and the 
nominalists, which divided the schoolmen throughout the 
Middle Ages, did much to awaken thought. William of 
Champeaux expounded the realistic doctrine with great 
brilliancy. But he was eclipsed by one of his disciples, 
Abelard, born in 1079, near Nantes ; a noble and handsome 
young man, full of genius and extraordinarily popular. But 
the greatest man in the Church in those days, and one of 
the great doctors of all time, St. Bernard, thought he 
saw heresy in the writings of the brilliant professor. The 
council of Soissons ordered his book on the Trinity to be 
burned (1122) ; and the council of Sens again condemned 
him in 1140. Abelard died two years after, a monk at 
Cluny. His eloquence, his contest with Bernard, rendered 
him celebrated during his lifetime. His misfortunes and the 
love of Heloise have perpetuated his memory. 



144 LOUIS VII., THE YOUNG. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

LOUIS VII., THE YOUNG. 
(1137-1180 A.D.) 

Louis VII. (1137-1180) ; his Marriage. — Louis the Fat 
left six sons. The eldest, Louis VIL, called the Young, 
had contracted, before the death of his father, a brilliant 
marriage. He had married Eleanor of Gviienne, heiress of 
Poitou and the duchy of Aquitaine. The inheritance of 
fiefs by women was one of the most active causes of the ruin 
of the feudal families. Women, by marriage, carried the 
fiefs from one house to another, till the greater part of 
them were added to that of France, which lasted while 
others became extinct. The dower of JEleanor was the most 
important one yet received by any of the French kings. 
It was nothing less than the half of Southern France. Un- 
happily Louis VII. did not retain it. 

Continuation of the Policy of Louis the Fat (1137-1147). 
— Louis the Young carried out the policy of his father. 
A commtuial insurrection at Poitiers was quelled. Several 
lords were deprived of their fiefs on account of their vio- 
lent acts. A war against the Count of Champagne had 
even more important results. The Pope had appointed his 
own nephew archbishop of Bourges, without regard to the 
royal right of presentation. Louis drove the new prelate 
from his see and the Count of Champagne granted him an 
asylum. The king seized the opportunity to humiliate his 
refractory vassal. He entered his domains, ravaged them, 
and burned the small city of Vitry. Thirteen hundred per- 
sons who had taken refuge in the church perished in the 
flames. 

The Second Crusade (1147). — Such an event was not 
unusual, but it weighed heavily upon the king's conscience, 
and to expiate it Louis assumed the cross. His father had 
owed his success partly to the fact that the richest lords 
had exhausted their resources in order to go to Jerusalem, 
and many of them had never returned. It was a mistake 



LOUIS riL, THE YOUNG. 145 

to renounce this system. But the Emperor of Germany- 
proposed to go this time, and the king of France could not 
remain behind and abandon the kingdom of Jerusalem 
which had been established by the French, and which was 
now on the brink of ruin. The Atabeks of Aleppo had 
just taken Edessa, and Noureddin threatened Palestine. In 
spite of the prudent counsels of abbot Suger, Louis resolved 
to place himself at the head of a second expedition to the 
Holy Land. The crusade was preached in France and 
Germany by St. Bernard, but the zeal of the jpeople had 
already grown cool. 

Louis, however, set out from France and marched by way 
of Metz and Germany towards Constantinople. The Em- 
peror Manuel sent his deputies a great distance to meet 
the crusaders, desiring that they should take an oath of 
fidelity to him, to which they again consented. The Ger- 
mans were already in the midst of Asia Minor. But, 
betrayed by their Greek guides, they wandered about in the 
defiles of the Taurus, and fell by the sword of the Turks. 
The Emperor Conrad returned almost alone to Constanti- 
nople. 

Louis, warned of the danger, took the route by the sear 
shore, and at first gained there the victory of the Maeander. 
But as soon as they entered the mountains, the unskilful- 
ness of the commanders and the want of discipline among 
the soldiers brought about severe disasters. At Satalieh it 
was thought impossible to go any farther. The king and 
the nobles embarked in certain Greek vessels, in order to 
finish their pilgrimage by sea, abandoning the vast multitude 
of the pilgrims, who were either killed by the arrows of the 
Turks, or, to escape death, became Moslems. 

Having reached Antioch, Louis thought no more of battles, 
but of accomplishing his pilgrim's vow, praying at the Holy 
Sepulchre, and ending as quickly as possible this unfortu- 
nate enterprise. He hastened to Jerusalem. It was neces- 
sary however to do something, and to draw the sword at 
least once in Palestine. An attack on Damascus was first 
proposed. The attack at first seemed to be successful, but 
disputes and dissensions arising between the Christian 
princes, the Moslems had time to be reinforced. The siege 
had to be raised. Few of those who left Europe ever 
returned. The first crusade had at least accomplished its 
aim, it had delivered Jerusalem j the second had shed 



146 LOUIS VIL, THE YOUNG. 

Cliristian blood without result. After it, Palestine found 
itself weaker, Islam stronger, and the crusaders earned by 
tlieir undertaking only slaanie and dishonor. 

Divorce of Louis VII. (1152) ; its Consequences. — On his 
return, the king found his States in peace, thanks to the 
wise administration of Suger; but he divorced his wife 
Eleanor, with whom he had become displeased dvxring the 
crusade, to which she had followed him. The princess, by 
another marriage, soon carried her duchy of Guienne to 
Henry Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, 
and heir to the crown of England (1152). When, two years 
later, Henry came into possession of his heritage, and when 
he had added Brittany to it by the marriage of one of his 
sons to the only daughter of the count of that country, 
he found himself master of almost the whole of Western 
France. 

The king of France had cause to tremble for his crown, 
but Henry II. hesitated to attack his suzerain, lest the 
example should affect his own vassals. Louis found fur- 
ther means of defending himself by sustaining the continual 
revolts of the four sons of Henry II. against their father. 
The assassination of Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canter- 
bury, also deeply injured Henry's cause, and he passed his 
last days in fighting against his subjects, his sons, and the 
king of France. 

Administration of Louis VII. ; Suger. — Louis VIL, though 
by no means an active and resolute king, seconded the com- 
munal movement. His efforts to maintain order by means 
of his provosts favored the progress of the urban popiilation. 
Under him, says a chronicler, a great number of towns were 
built, and a great many old ones enlarged. Forests were 
cut down, and vast tracts of land were brought under culti- 
vation. He also confirmed the ancient |)rivileges of the 
Hanse, or society of merchants in Paris. 

Suger, a man of humble parentage, deservedly won by his 
sense of right, by his activity of mind, by his devotion to 
the interests of the king and the kingdom, the friendship of 
Louis VL, and the confidence of Louis VIL Elected abbot 
of St. Denis, he renounced the magnificence with which 
prelates then surrounded themselves, and employed all his 
resources in decorating the interior of the church and in 
rebuilding parts of it. Louis VII. appointed him adminis- 
trator of the kingdom during his crusade. He showed the 



LOUIS VII., THE YOUNG. 147 

same modesty in that position, and by his skilfuhiess in 
the management of affairs restored order to the finances and 
peace to the kingdom. It is true that the departure of so 
many turbulent lords rendered his task easy. Though 
hardly to be compared with Sully, Richelieu or Colbert, he 
at least possessed in common with them a sense of the 
duties of royalty and the need of order. His position as 
abbot of St. Denis won to his side the episcopate, which 
sustained him with all its power, and that support was 
singularly favorable to royalty. 



SIXTH PERIOD. 



FiKST Victory op Royalty over the Feudal 
Aristocracy (1180-1328). 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND LOUIS VIIL 
(1180-1333 A.D.) 

Elements of Strength possessed by French Royalty. — 

Froin the ninth to the twelfth centuries, public powers had 
become domanial poAvers, exercised by the great landholders. 
This aristocratic revolution, which had broken up the unity 
of the country, was succeeded by a monarchical revolution. 
The king was to become the sole judge, sole administrator, 
and sole legislator of the country. This revolution, begun 
by Philip Augustus and St. Louis, who reconstituted a cen- 
tral government, was not destined to be completely accom- 
plished till the advent of Louis XIV., because the Hundred 
Years' War in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the 
religious wars in the sixteenth, suspended this great inter- 
nal work. 

Social transformations are prepared by latent energies 
which are gradually set in motion and direct events. When 
Capetian royalty appeared weakest, it was silently guarding 
elements of power which time would call into action. As 
nominal head of the feudal society, the king had a great 
title ; he was the suzerain, and the great vassals owed him 
homage and military service. Legally, the king was the 
supreme justice of the kingdom ;' the vassals were amenable 
to the king's court. This court was both a great deliberative 
council and a court of justice. When the great vassals con- 



PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND LOUIS VIIL 149 

tended with each other, was not the arbiter necessarily their 
common sovereign ? They had, however, the right to require 
the presence of their equals or peers in the tribunal. In 
such cases the court of the king became the court of peers. 
Besides, the suzerain inherited by right when the fief fell 
into escheat; in case of minority, he had the care of the 
fief. 

The suzerain, proprietor of a fief, had the right to require 
that without his consent no changes should be made in it 
which could in any way diminish its value. If a vassal 
granted any privileges in his fief, he was obliged to have 
them confirmed by his suzerain. Philip Augustus knew 
how to make use of these prerogatives, which until his time 
had been almost valueless. 

Philip Augustus (1180-1223); Acquisitions. —Philip as- 
cended the throne at the age of fifteen. His relatives and 
vassals thought they would be able to do as they pleased 
with such a child. He surprised them by his activity and 
resolution. The result of the wars which he was compelled 
to sustain, was the acquisition of the counties of Amiens, 
Vermandois, and Valois. Artois, which fell to him in 1191, 
through his wife, Isabella of Hainavilt, extended the domains 
of the crown as far as the frontiers of Flanders. Philip 
repressed feudal disorder, banished the Jews, seizing most 
of their property, and had a number of heretics burned. 
Lastly, the insurrection of the cotereaux, bands of robbers 
who ravaged the central portion of France, was quelled by 
royal troops assisted by the inhabitants of the communes. 

Third Crusade (1190-1191). — Jerusalem had fallen, in 
1187, into the hands of the infidels. Its last king had been 
made prisoner by Saladin at the battle of Tiberias. Chris- 
tendom made a powerful effort ; Hichard Coeur de Lion, king 
of England, and Philip Augustus set out together. The 
Emperor Frederic Barbarossa had preceded them. They 
did not go farther than Acre, which was recaptured. During 
the long siege misunderstandings arose between the two 
kings. Philip, eclipsed by his brilliant rival, hastened to 
return to France so as to be able to work the ruin of the 
too powerful house of England. He had a secret under- 
standing with John, the brother whom Richard had left in 
charge of his kingdom. But Richard, returning, made war 
on Philip Augustus and defeated him, yet without gaining 
anything by the victory. Pope Innocent III. interposed and 



150 PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND LOUIS VIII. 

induced tlieiii to sign a truce for five years (1199). Two 
montlis after, Eicliard was killed while attacking a castle 
in tlie Limousin. 

Condemnation of John Lackland; Acquisition of Several 
Provinces (1204). — Richard was succeeded by his brother 
(1199). The king of France immediately became the enemy 
of his former all}^ and took, against him, the part of John's 
nephew Arthur, whom John is supposed to have stabbed 
with his own hand. Philip had before this summoned John 
to appear before the twelve- grand vassals of the crown or 
peers of the kingdom. On his refusal he confiscated his 
fiefs, entered with an army into Normandy, which John 
had left defenceless, and following up his victories, took 
possession of all the cities of the province, even Rouen. 
Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou were also easily united to the 
royal domain. These were the most brilliant conquests 
that a king of Prance had ever yet made. 

Victory of Bonvines (1214). — Coward though he was, 
John could not submit to such humiliation. He formed a 
vast coalition. While he himself was attacking France on 
the southwest, the Emperor of Germany, Otto IV., the 
counts of Flanders and Boulogne, with all the princes of 
the Low Countries, were to attack the northern portion. 
But France aroused herself to repel the foreign invasion. 
Louis, the king's son, went to confront the English king in 
Poitou ; and Philip, with his knights and the militia of the 
northern communes, marched against the enemy, whom they 
met near the bridge of Bouvines, between Lille and Tournai. 
The hostile chiefs, surrounded by a force estimated at 
100,000 men, were confident of victory. 

The two armies remained for some time at a distance 
from, each other without daring to begin the battle, and 
the French were retiring by way of the bridge of Bouvines 
for the purpose of marching upon Hainault, when the 
enemy, attacking their rear guard, compelled them to turn 
about. When the battle began, the communal militia was 
already beyond Bouvines ; they hastily recrossed the bridge 
and came to the centre in front of the king and his battal- 
ions. The German knights, and among them the Emperor 
Otto, charged these brave men, and cut through them in 
order to reach the king; but the most renowned warriors of 
France threw themselves before them and stopped them. 
During this fray, the German foot-soldiers came up behind 



PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND LOUIS VIIL 151 

their cavalry, and reached the spot where Philip was. They 
dragged him from his horse, and while he was down, tried 
to pierce his visor or some joint of his armor. Certain 
knights and men of the communes hastened to his assist- 
ance. They delivered the king, placed him on a charger, 
and he again rushed into the fight. The Emperor also nar- 
rowly escaped being taken, but was finally rescued. 

On the right, the Count of Flanders fell wounded into 
the hands of the French ; in the centre, the Emperor with 
his German princes fled; but on the left, the Count of 
Boulogne and the English held the field. At sight of this, 
the warlike bishop of Beauvais attacked them vigorously, 
and soon the English were entirely routed. The Count of 
Boulogne, after a brave resistance, was cajDtured ; five other 
counts and twenty-five bannerets were already captives. 

The king's return to Paris was a triumphal march. 
Thanksgiving services were held in all the churches as he 
passed along, and the chants of the clergy were heard 
mingled with the bells and the harmonious sounds of mar- 
tial music. The houses were hung with curtains and tap- 
estries ; the roads were strewn with green branches and 
fresh flowers. All the people, men and women, old men and 
children, came in crowds to the cross-roads. At Paris the 
burgesses and a great number of clergy, scholars, and other 
people, went to meet the king, singing hymns and canticles. 
They kept up unprecedented festivities, which went on by 
night as well as by day. During these rejoicings, the com- 
munal militia, which had conducted itself so bravely during 
the fight, came with great pomp to deliver their prisoners 
to the provost of Paris. One hundred and ten knights had 
fallen into their hands, to say nothing of common soldiers. 
The king gave them a part of these to be held for ransom, 
and imprisoned the rest. 

Philip did not, by this great victory, acquire any addi- 
tional territory. But he had repelled a formidable invasion, 
caused an emperor and a king to fly before him, frustrated 
the evil designs of several great vassals, and, best of all, 
given to the Capetian dynasty a prestige which until then 
it had not enjoyed, and revealed to France her own jDower. 
The victory gave a great impetus to the national spirit and 
to patriotism, —a feeble sentiment still, and one which was 
destined more tnan once to seem extinguished, but only to 
reappear with victorious energy. 



152 PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND LOUIS VIIL 

Fourth Crusade (1202-1204).— The nobility manifested 
its warlike activity under this reign by two enterprises : 
the fourth crusade, which changed the Greek Empire into a 
French Empire, and the war against the Albigenses, which 
once more attached to France the people of the South. 
Philip took no part in either. He left the nobles to expend 
their resources and their turbulence in these enterprises 
which were doubly profitable to France, by the order which 
he was thus enabled to establish in the kingdom, and by the 
lustre which was shed on her name abroad. 

Since the failure of the third crusade, Jerusalem had been 
forgotten. The great Pope, Innocent III., wished to call the 
attention of Christendom to it; he therefore preached a 
crusade promising remission of sins to all those who would 
serve God for one year. Fulk, cur6 of Neuilly-sur-Marne, 
was the preacher of this crusade, and persuaded many to 
take the cross. Again the kings held aloof, and the people 
also. It was determined to take the route by sea, and 
deputies were sent to Venice to hire ships (1201). The 
republic made the necessary agreement with them, on con- 
dition that they should aid it in taking Zara in Dalmatia, 
to which they consented (1202) . Next, the Venetians per- 
suaded their allies that the keys of Jerusalem were at Cairo 
or at Constantinople. There was some truth in this idea, but 
there was still more of commercial interest. The possession 
of Cairo opened the route to India to the Venetian mer- 
chants ; that of Constantinople assured them of the commerce 
of the Black Sea and the whole of the Archipelago. It was 
decided to go by way of Constantinople, whither a young 
Greek prince, Alexis, offered to conduct them, on condition 
that they should re-establish on the throne his father, Isaac 
Angelos, who had been deposed (1203) . 

The disembarkation of the French was but feebly opposed, 
and in July, 1203, the city was carried by assault. The 
old Emperor, taken from his prison, was re-established on 
the throne. Alexis had made the most extravagant promi- 
ses to the crusaders. In order to fulfil them, he levied 
new taxes and exasperated his subjects to such a degree 
that they slew their Emperor and created another, named 
Mourzoufle, and closed the gates of the city. The crusaders 
immediately attacked it. In three days they again took 
possession of it (March, 1204) ; this time they sacked it. 

Constantinople captured, they divided the Empire among 



PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND LOUIS VIIL 153 

themselves. Baldwin IV., Count of Flanders, was elected 
Emperor ; other lords and princes, king of Macedonia, prince 
of Achaia, dukes of Athens and Naxos, count of Gephalonia, 
lords of Thebes and Corinth. Venice retained one-quarter 
of Constantinople with all the ports of the Empire and all 
the islands. A new France with its feudal customs arose 
at the extremity of Europe. But the crusaders were too 
few in number to be able to keep their conquest long, and 
in 1261 the Latin Empire fell to pieces, though some of its 
feudal principalities remained. 

The Albigenses. — Meanwhile the attention of France was 
strongly excited by the presence of heresy in its Southern 
provinces. Peter de Brueys, Henry the Deacon, and Peter 
Waldo rejected the baptism of infants, the sacrifice of the 
mass, the adoration of the cross, the traf&c in indulgences, 
etc. They admitted no authority in religioiis matters but 
the Bible, and wished to return to the Christianity of the 
Gospels. In the South of France, in the midst of a people 
made up of so many races, this return of the religious spirit 
to the old paths also again brought up the Gnostic doctrines 
which had troubled the Church so much during the first 
centuries. The Roman ecclesiastics were treated with scorn; 
missionaries were sent everywhere ; the offensive doctrines 
began to make their apjjearance in Flanders, in Germany, 
in England, and even in Italy. 

Among these rich and splendid cities of the South, the 
chief was Toulouse, whose count was Raymond VI., one of 
the greatest lords of the South. The other powers were 
the house of Barcelona and Aragon, which possessed, in 
France, Roussillon and Provence, and the lesser lords of 
the Pyrenees, proud, independent, and adventurous. The 
South of France, indeed, had long been separated from the 
North. It had another language and other customs. Com- 
merce had there diffused ease among the citizens, luxury 
among the lords. But in these rich cities, in these brilliant 
courts enlivened by the songs of the troubadours, religious 
doctrines were as lightly treated as manners and morals. 

The Albigensian Crusade (1208). — The all-powerful In- 
nocent III. resolved to crush out this nest of impiety. He 
first organized against the sectarians the famous Inquisition, 
a tribunal for the purpose of examining and judging heretics 
by means of torture, and sent to Raymond VI. his legate, 
Peter of Castelnau, who required the expulsion of the 



154 PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND LOUIS VIIL 

heretics. But the heretics composed almost the whole of 
the inhabitants. Peter accomplished nothing. Raymond 
was excommunicated and threatened by the legate. One of 
his knights followed the latter and slew him. The Pope 
proclaimed a crusade against the Count of Toulouse. Many 
Prench lords and bishox3S hastened to the quarry, and three 
armies invaded the South ; Simon de Montf ort, an ambitious, 
fanatical, and cruel man, was their commander. 

They first attacked the viscount of B^ziers. That city 
was taken. The conquerors hesitated to slay, not being able 
to distinguish the heretics : " Kill them all," said one of 
the chiefs ; " God will know his own." Thirty thousand 
perished. Carcassonne fell also. Raymond hoped to be 
spared, but the papal legates offered pardon to the Count 
of Toulouse only on condition that he should dismiss his 
soldiers, pull down his castles, and go off to the Holy Land. 
The count scorned such propositions and the attack was 
renewed under Simon de Montfort. Raymond, conquered 
at Castelnaudary, fled to Aragon, and the conquerors divided 
his territory among them. In order to put a stop to this 
invasion of the South by the men of the North, the king 
of Aragon, Pedro II., crossed the mountains with a large' 
force; but the battle of Muret, in which he was killed, 
decided the fate of Languedoc (1213). The Lateran Coun- 
cil, two years later, ratified the deposition of Raymond and 
the greater part of the lords of the country. The legate 
of the Holy See gave their fiefs to Simon de Montfort. 
The civilization of the South, crushed out by these harsh 
measures, perished. 

In their misery, the people of Languedoc appealed to 
the king of Prance. Montpellier gave herself to him. 
After the death of Simon de Montfort, who was killed be- 
fore Toulouse, of which the son of Count Raymond had 
resumed possession, the heir of De Montfort, Amaury, 
offered to • cede to the king the acquisitions made by his 
father, which he could no longer defend against the univer- 
sal reprobation of his subjects. This offer was accepted 
later. 

Expedition to England (1216).^ After the defeat of the 
allies at Bouvines, the nobles and commons, clergy and 
laity of England, uniting, compelled king John to sign the 
Great Charter of English liberties (1215). John, supported 
by the Pope, soon after began war against the barons. The 



PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND LOUIS VIIL 155 

latter called to tlieir assistance Louis, the son of Philip 
Augustus. In 1216 he landed in England, in spite of an 
excommunication from the Pope, and was likely to have 
succeeded but for the death of king John, who left as his 
successor an infant son, Henry III. The barons perceived 
that this infant king was better for them than a foreign 
prince. Louis was therefore gradually abandoned, and 
obliged to return to France (1217). 

Relations of Philip with the Court of Rome. — Philip's 
second wife was Ingeborg of Denmark, whom he married in 
1193, and divorced the day after their marriage. He soon 
after married Agnes of Meran. Ingeborg appealed to the 
Pope, who took her cause in hand, and, on Philip's refusing 
to abandon Agnes, placed the kingdom under an interdict. 
The services ceased in all the churches ; the people were 
without prayers. In the end the king was obliged to yield. 
He sent away Agnes of Meran, who died of grief, and 
took Ingeborg back in 1213. On the other hand, in 1203, 
when Philip invaded the fiefs which John had lost by his 
felony, and Innocent III. threatened him with the anath- 
emas of the Church if he proceeded, Philip compelled his 
great vassals to give him a written pledge to sustain him 
against all persons, even against the lord Pope, and con- 
tinued his expedition. 

Louis VIII. (1223-1226). —Philip Augustus died in July, 
1223, at the age of fifty-nine. The reign of his son was 
only a continuation of his own. From the English he con- 
quered what Philip Augustus had not taken of Poitou, 
Aunis, Eochelle, Limoges, P6rigueux; in Languedoc, he 
acquired Avignon by siege. The country from the Ehone 
to within four leagues of Toulouse submitted to him. Thus 
the whole South, west of the Rhone, with the exception of 
Guienne and Toulouse, recognized the royal authority ; the 
work of territorial unity was advancing. Louis VIIL died 
on his return from this expedition, at the age of thirty-nine. 

The Government of Philip Augustus. — Philip Augustus 
had reigned gloriously for forty-three years. He had 
doubled the royal domain by the acquisition of Verman- 
dois, Ami^nois, Artois, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, 
Poitou, and a part of Auvergne. He had given to royalty 
the strength which it needed in order to enforce its rights. 
Some powerful feudatories still remained. The king ruled 
directly only in his own domain ; but he in fact governed 



156 PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND LOUIS VIIL 

all France. Beginning witli his reign we find general ordi- 
nances, which were to be in force throughout the kingdom. 
Of the great court officers, with functions half domestic, 
half political, as those of the butler, the constable, the 
chamberlain, the seneschal, etc., Philip Augustus discon- 
tinued the last in 1191. The king's court remained what it 
was under the first Capetians, but its importance had in- 
creased with that of royalty. A judgment rendered by this 
court could dispossess of his fiefs the most powerful vassal 
of the king of France. 

Philip carefully avoided enfeoffing the new lands ac- 
quired by the crown. He divided his domain into bailliages 
and provostships. The provost administered justice, made 
military levies, and collected at his own risk the taxes of 
his district, which he had at farm. Each bailliage contained 
several provostships supervised by the bailli, who also, each 
month, heard appeals from the provosts' divisions. The 
king's court, in its turn, judged the appeals against the bailli. 
Four times a year the royal assizes, to which these officers 
were summoned to give the king an account of the affairs 
of their bailiwicks, were held at Paris. They also carried 
to him, three times a year, the revenues of his domain. 
The accounts were received by six burgesses and a clerk 
who kept the registers. The great lords were purposely 
kept out of administrative offices. 

Philip set himself boldly against feudal traditions. When 
he acquired Ami^nois, he owed homage for this fief to the 
bishop of Amiens. He refused it, saying that the king of 
France ought not to be a vassal of any one. He attacked 
feudalism in one of its most cherished rights, the right of 
private war. To prevent the relatives of one of the two ad- 
versaries, ignorant of the injury done, being attacked with- 
out warning, Philip ordered that such persons should have 
forty days ' truce and due notice. Besides, from the neces- 
sity of escaping such continual violences, a custom originated 
of which Philip made use, and which was of special service 
to royalty. One of the two parties could claim the asseure- 
ment of his suzerain ; that is to say, his guaranty against all 
attacks. The suzerain commanded the other party to ap- 
pear before him, offered him also the asseurement, and, if he 
refused it, imposed it upon him. Violations of such truce 
and asseurement were subject to severe penalties. 

But an army was necessary in order to enforce them. 



PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND LOUIS VIIL 157 

The feudal array was a very irregular army, difficult to get 
together, aud still more difficult to conduct. The rule was 
that the vassal owed the suzerain forty days' service for a 
full fief, but one claimed to be obliged to serve only within 
the limits of a certain territory ; another, to go to the army 
for only a certain number of days. When the question 
arose at whose expense the knight should serve, or by how 
many men the vassal should be followed, fresh contests 
arose. Kings therefore early felt the need of mercenaries. 
Thus the necessity of a royal army became apparent ; but 
in order to maintain it royal finances were needed. 

The Church was another power whose encroachments it 
was necessary to repel. The bishops had a double jurisdic- 
tion : as proprietors of fiefs, they had a seignorial tribunal 
to judge their lay vassals ; as bishops a cou7't Christian, in 
which they judged delicts and crimes committed by ecclesi- 
astics. Before this court they claimed to call a number of 
lay cases, as involving violations of the commands of God 
and the Church. They claimed, for instance, the judgment 
of perjury. But Philip and his barons refused them cogni- 
zance of perjury in feudal matters. They also took precau- 
tion against the indefinite increase of estates of mortmain, 
against the abuse of excommunication and of the right of 
asylum. 

Thus the king of France allied himself to the barons in 
order to defend his power against the Church, and the 
Church aided him often in defending himself against the 
barons. The king could always count upon the aid of 
the burgesses, for he instituted new communes, he con- 
firmed a great number of charters, and he employed the 
burgesses in the councils of the government. The citizen 
soldiery fought for him in all his wars. 

Thus is the increasing strength of French royalty ex- 
plained. While in England the barons, bishops, and com- 
mons united to limit the royal power, in France the royal 
power, feeble in the beginning, incessantly increased at the 
expense of the three orders, two of which generally united 
with it against the third. 

Philip fortified Paris, embellished the city, paved the 
streets, built market-houses, instituted a police, and pushed 
actively forward the work upon the church of jSTotre Dame. 
He constructed the fortress of the Louvre for himself. He 



158 PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND LOUIS VIII. 

founded the Archives, and prescribed for the schools of 
Paris a regulation which granted great privileges to the 
scholars; they and their professors were made amenable 
only to the ecclesiastical tribunal, and, about 1250, took the 
name of University. 



ST. LOUIS. 159 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

ST. LOUIS, 
(1836-1370 A.D.) 

St. Louis. — St. Louis (Louis IX.) is the true hero of the 
Middle Ages, a prince as pious as brave, who loved feudalism 
yet dealt it most deadly blows, who venerated the Church, 
yet if necessary could resist its chief ; a sweet and sincere 
spirit, a loving heart, filled with Christian charity, yet who 
condemned the body of the sinner to torture in order to save 
his soul, who on earth thought only of heaven, and who 
made his olhce of king a magistracy of order and equity. 
This saint, this man of peace, did more, in the simplicity of 
his heart, for the progress of royalty, than the most subtle 
counsellors or ten warlike monarchs, because, after him, the 
king seemed to the people the incarnation of justice and 
order. 

Regency of Blanche of Castile. — The son of Louis VIII. 
was a child of eleven years. A coalition of great vassals 
was formed immediately, to take advantage of his minority. 
The regent, Blanche of Castile, his mother, won over one of 
the confederates, the powerful Count of Champagne, and 
obtained from him the important counties of Blois, Chartres, 
and Sancerre. A treaty, signed in 1229, assured the inheri- 
tance of the Count of Toulouse to a brother of the king, 
and a marriage contracted between the king's second brother 
and the heiress of Provence paved the way for the union of 
that country to France at another time. Thus the king 
found himself master, directly or through his brothers, of a 
great part of the South of France. The majority of St. 
Louis was proclaimed in 1236 ; but the wise regent retained 
her influence. 

The great pontificate of Innocent III. had given fresh 
energy to the Church and to religious feelmg. The spirit of 
the crusaders was again aroused. Jews were massacred and 
heretics burned. But the crusade itself (1239) was a failure, 
^d Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Kharesmians. 



160 ST. LOUIS. 

Relations with Foreign Powers. — In 1241, the Emperor 
Frederick II. having detained the French prelates who had 
gone to Rome to the conncil, St. Lonis firmly insisted that 
they shonld be set at liberty. He refused, when requested 
by the Pope, to modify a royal ordinance of 1234 which 
restricted the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical tribunals. At- 
tacked by the English, in 1242, St. Louis defeated them at 
TaiUebourg and Saintes. He would perhaps have been 
able to drive them out of France, but he refused to follow 
up his victory. The territorial acquisitions made during 
the past half-century had trebled the extent of the royal 
domains ; but they seemed to him stained with violence, 
being the gains of two confiscations. By reason of con- 
scientious scruples, he allowed the king of England to take 
the duchy of (xuienne, on condition of doing homage to the 
crown. Finally, in order to prevent perjuries, he compelled 
all lords who held fiefs of tAvo crowns to choose between 
the two sovereigns. His southern boundary was fixed, by 
an agreement with the king of Aragon, and the county of 
Barcelona ceased to depend upon the crown of France (1258) . 
In 1245 Pope Innocent IV., driven from Italy by the Empe- 
ror Frederick, took refuge in Lyons, and held there the 
thirteenth ecumenical council, which was attended by one 
hundred and forty bishops. 

First Crusade of St. Louis (1248-1254).— During an ill- 
ness which nearly proved fatal, in 1244, Louis made a vow 
to go to the Holy Land. His mother and his counsellors at- 
tempted in vain to dissuade him from this resolution. Louis 
left the royal power again in the hands of Queen Blanche, 
and embarked at Aigues-Mortes, on the Mediterranean. The 
Sire de Joinville, the king's friend and biographer, describes 
the departure of the fleet, priests and warriors all singing 
together the hymn Veyii, creator Spiritus, as they set sail, 
and the delightful talk of the good king during the voyage. 

St. Louis had for two years caused a great quantity of pro- 
visions to be collected in the island of Cyprus. The army 
thence set out for Egypt in 1800 vessels, large and small. 
Damietta, at one of the mouths of the Nile, was taken 
(June, 1249), but precious time was lost before marching 
upon Cairo. Five months and a half of delay restored the 
courage of the Mamelukes. Finally the crusaders advanced 
slowly to Mansourah. A badly managed battle at that 
place cost the lives of a large number of knights and the 



ST. LOUIS. 161 

Count of Artois, tlie brother of St. Louis. Soon the army was 
surrounded by enemies and the ranks thinned by pestilence. 
The retreat was disastrous ; they were obliged at last to 
surrender. The saintly king rendered his captivity honor- 
able by his courage, and inspired even his enemies with 
respect for his virtues. They released him in consideration 
of a large ransom. On being set at liberty he went into 
Palestine, where he remained three years, employing his 
influence and his zeal in maintaining harmony among the 
Christians, and his resoiirces in repairing the fortifications 
of the places which they still occupied. 

The Pastoureaux; Return of Louis (1254). — The news 
of these disasters only increased the king's popularity in 
France. With wild enthusiasm, an immense crowd of 
serfs and peasants assembled to cross the sea and go to the 
rescue of the king. This was the crusade of the Pastou- 
reaux ; but these men lived by pillage as they went along ; 
even murder was committed ; it became necessary to deal 
rigorously with them. The news of the death of the regent 
(December, 1252) at last recalled Louis to France. In 
1284 he was chosen arbiter between the king of England 
and his barons, on the subject of the Provisions of Oxford. 
He decided in favor of the king, but unsuccessfully ; for the 
barons paid no attention to the arbiter's sentence, and put 
Henry III. under severe restrictions. More fortunate else- 
where, he decided a question of succession which delivered 
Flanders from civil war. 

Last Crusade of St. Louis. — In the year 1270 St. Louis 
undertook another crusade, this time directed against Tunis ; 
but died of the pestilence, under the walls of the place, with 
the greater part of his army. 

The French had, in this reign, made another great ex- 
pedition without the aid of royalty. Charles of Anjou, 
Count of Provence, summoned by the Pope to aid him 
against King Manfred, son of the Emperor Frederick II., 
had conquered, in 1266, the kingdom of Naples. It was to 
the self-interested advice of Charles of Anjou that the 
direction taken by the last crusade was due, for he ex- 
pected that the submission of the king of Tunis would 
secure Sicily from the continual incursions of the Saracens 
into that island. 

Administration of St. Louis. — Capetian royalty had made 
great progress. The counts of Flanders and Brittany and 



162 ST. LOUIS. 

the Duke of Guienne were almost the only lords who had 
not descended to the condition of obedient vassals ; but 
feudalism still retained great prerogatives. St. Louis at- 
tacked them in the name of justice and religion. By per- 
severing in the execution of the ordinances respecting the 
qiiarantaine le roy and asseurement, he suppressed almost all 
private wars. As a Christian, he was opposed to these wars 
which sent into the presence of God so many ill-prepared 
souls ; as a prince, he desired to arrest the devastation of 
the country districts. He forbade the judiciary duel in his 
own domains. The king's justice was thus substituted for 
individual violence, and the evidence of witnesses and writ- 
ten proceedings replaced trials by combat. 

Appeals and Royal Cases. — The lords rendered justice 
on their own estates. The villein could not question their 
judgment, but the vassal had the right to appeal to the 
suzerain from the sentence of his lord. The king also 
favored the custom of appealing directly to his court, which 
subordinated seignorial justice to his own. When a cause 
carried before a seignorial tribunal touched the king's inter- 
ests, the bailli interposed and claimed jurisdiction, the king 
not being amenable to a lord. These causes were the royal 
cases. It was easy to multiply them. At the same time 
the institution of the bourgeoisie of the king was established. 
An inhabitant of a seignorial estate could, under certain 
conditions of establishment and temporary residence in a 
royal city, acquire the quality of king's burgess. The 
king's burgess could be judged by the king's oflELcers only. 

The King's Court. — The king's court continued to accu- 
mulate all sorts of attributes ; it was a court of accounts, and 
if it pleased the king, a political council ; but it was par- 
ticularly, in the time of St. Louis, a court of justice. The 
royal finances Avere always very simple ; in case of a crusade, 
of the captivity of the king, of knighthood conferred upon 
his eldest son, and of his marriage, the prince, as in the 
case of all lords, could claim the feudal aids. The revenues 
of the domain, well administered, were still sufficient to 
sustain royalty. 

But in the court, the role of the great vassals and officers 
of the crown had diminished. Since they had not sufficient 
learning to administer the law under the new system of 
procedure in writing, legists were added. At first the 
barons scornfully seated these plebeians on stools at their 



ST. LOUIS. 163 

feet. Soon the baron -was silent in presence of his learned 
counsellors ; the latter acquired complete control of judg- 
ments, and the fate of criminals, even the most noble, was 
placed in their hands. This court had its regular ses- 
sions at Paris, generally four times a year. 

The Provincial Administration ; Baillis, Royal Inquisitors, 
and Provosts. — In the provincial administration, Louis, to 
protect his own power and his subjects, forbade the baillis 
and seneschals making presents to the members of the coun- 
cil, receiving, or even borrowing money from suitors in their 
courts, taking part in sales and leases granted in the name 
of the king. They were forbidden to bu.y any land in their 
jurisdictions, or to marry their sons and daughters without 
the permission of the king. If they "did wrong," they 
were punished in their property and in their persons. On 
going out of office they were made answerable to those 
whom they had wronged. St. Louis sent through the 
provinces commissioners or royal inquisitors to defend the 
rights of the king, and also those of his subjects. In all 
these measures the influence of the legists and the memories 
of the Koman administration are to be seen. 

We have spoken of the organization of the provostships. 
Those who formed that of Paris, according to Joinville, 
oppressed the lower class, sustained their families in any 
outrages which they committed, allowed themselves to be 
corrupted by the wealthy class, and took no notice of thieves 
and evil-doers, who crowded Paris and the environs. The 
king removed them and put in their place Etienne Boileau, 
who kept order with rigid severity. 

The King and Feudalism. — Louis had dealt feudalism 
some severe blows by the suppression of the judicial duel, 
the interdiction of private Avars, and the introduction of 
appeals. He was not a revolutionary king, but he regarded 
it as the duty of royalty to assure peace and repose to its 
subjects. The spirit of justice and Christian sentiments 
Avere his guiding motives. 

He Avas determined that all should submit to this justice 
which he thought he had been delegated by God to estab- 
lish. His brother, the Count of Anjou, had in a trial con- 
demned a knight, and the latter having taken an appeal to 
the king's court, the count had throAvn him into prison. 
The king informed his brother that there Avas only one king 
in France, and that, brother of the king though he was, 



164 ST. LOUIS, 

he would not be spared contrary to justice. The Count of 
Anjou was obliged to release his prisoner; he came in per- 
son to defend himself against the appeal to the king's court, 
which, however, pronounced in favor of the knight. 

Ordinances respecting Money. — The right of coining 
money belonged to more than twenty-four lords, who often 
coined bad money. St. Louis decided that his own should 
pass throughout the kingdom ; that it alone should be re- 
ceived in the royal domain, and in the territories of lords who 
had not the right to coin money ; that the seignorial money 
.should pass only in the territory of the lord who issued it, 
and that these lords should coin only certain pieces of de- 
termined value. He also determined to coin better parisis 
and better tournois than those of his lords, so that his 
money, like his justice, should be worth more than that of 
his vassals. He held his lords responsible for the police 
of the roads in their lordships. At Paries, he instituted the 
royal watch and caused the provost, Etienne Boileau, to 
reduce to writing the ancient regulations of the hundred 
trades which existed in that city. These trades were 
grouped in great corporations ; in the fifteenth century all 
the merchants of Paris formed six bodies of arts and trades. 

The King and the Church. — St. Louis showed a respectful 
firmness toward the papal authority. He maintained the 
liberties of the Galilean Church and restricted the imposi- 
tions which the Church of Rome placed upon the churches 
of Prance. His earnest faith insured him against all fear 
of injuring the Church ; it even led him to harsh acts which 
now seem barbarous. He punished blasphemers by pierc- 
ing their tongues with a red-hot iron. 

Decline of the Communes. — He was extremely generous 
to the cities. Yet communal independence did not seem 
better to him than feudal independence, and he favored the 
transformation of communes into royal cities, the latter de- 
pendent on the supreme joower, yet enjoying municipal privi- 
leges. Thus the communes began to disappear, and with 
them their proud sentiments, their grand ideas of right and 
liberty ; but the third estate was beginning its course. 

By the weakening of feudal and communal independence, 
by his firm government with regard to the Church, Louis 
showed to his successors the jmths which were to lead 
Prench royalty on to absolute power. He rendered them 
another service. The memory of his virtues did not perish 



ST. LOUIS. 165 

witli liim. Venerated during his lifetime as a saint, he was 
canonized after his death, and, as it were, sanctified French 
royalty. 

The Sainte Chapelle ; the Sorhonne. — He built the hospi- 
tal of the Quinze-Vingts for the blind, several h6tels-Dieu, 
and the church of Vincennes. To contain the crown of 
thorns, which the Venetians had sold him, he built in his 
palace, now the palace of justice, the Sainte Chapelle. His 
confessor, Eobert de Sorbon, founded a community under 
the name of " Congregation of the poor masters students of 
theology." This congregation became the Sorbonne, a fac- 
ulty of theology celebrated throughout Christendom. 



166 CIVILIZATION IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

CIVILIZATION IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 

Greatness of the Thirteenth Century. — The most remark- 
able period of the Middle Ages is the thirteenth century. 
Two great Popes, Innocent III. and Innocent IV., then occu- 
pied the chair of St. Peter ; a saint sat on the throne of 
France, and on that of the Empire a prince upon whom the 
gaze of the world has rested ever since, Frederick II. Italy 
temporarily regained her independence. England established 
her public liberties, wrote her great charter, instituted her 
Parliament. The crusades failed ; but the results of these 
great enterprises were still dazzlingly manifest. That great 
movement of men led to a great movement of things and 
ideas. Commerce, industry, letters, the arts, advanced by 
leaps and bounds ; schools multiplied ; studies progressed ; 
national literature was started ; great names appeared, — 
Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Dante. 

Power of French Royalty. — In France great changes had 
occurred in the last one hundred and fifty years. The great 
revolutionist, at this period, was the king, as the aristocracy 
had been before Hugh Capet, as the people were to be after 
Louis XIV. Royalty advanced with long strides towards ab- 
solute power. It had imposed upon its turbulent vassals 
the king's peace, the king's justice, the king's money, and it 
made laws for all. 

Formation of the Third Estate. — To this revolution among 
the upper classes there corresponded a revolution among the 
lower classes. In the eleventh century the people had 
united for common defence. They had extorted from the 
lords the right to administer their own affairs, they had 
built walls and towers, organized a militia, and elected mag- 
istrates. They had lived in this way for a century and a 
half, in a proud independence, but also in isolation, and 
always on the watch. Royalty, on coming into absolute 
power, was disturbed by the free discussion and independence 
of these communities. Its intervention became greater from 



CIVILIZATION IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 167 

day to day, and the communes little by little disappeared. 
France thus escaped the danger of having, like Italy, a 
thousand republics, and of being, like her, delivered over 
for several centuries to be the prey of municipal anarchy 
and foreign rule. Yet from another point of view it was a 
misfortune that those urban liberties were suppressed, by 
which the nation would have obtained the strong political 
education which it has always lacked. 

But though no more communal charters were granted, 
there were charters of bourgeoisie and of enfranchisement. 
In the twelfth century the serfs had already been admitted 
to witness in courts of justice ; and Popes had demanded 
their liberty. In the thirteenth, enfranchisements were 
very numerous, for the lords began to perceive the superior 
economic advantage of having free tenants. Thus there 
were two movements uniting to form of the non-nobles a 
class whose members should have a strong feeling of com- 
mon interests, — the Third Estate. 

The Legists and the Roman Law. — This new class was 
animated by quite another spirit than that of feudalism. 
While this latter bestowed everything upon the eldest and 
rendered inheritances inalienable, the bourgeois embodied in 
their charters some of the principles of rational law, such as 
equal division of property among all the children. The 
new popular law could not have struggled successfully with 
the aristocratic law, if it had not found a powerful auxiliary 
in the old law of the Eoman Emperors. Long neglected 
but not entirely forgotten, this law was taken up again with 
enthusiasm in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in some 
of the cities of Italy, especially in Bologna, to which numbers 
of scholars resorted from all Europe. Soon Montpellier, 
Angers, and Orleans had professorships of Eoman law. In 
the eyes of the men of that time, wandering in the chaos 
of feudal law, the Roman code, an admirable collection of 
logical deductions, which have for starting-points natural 
equity and common utility, seemed to be truly, as they called 
it, written reason. The rich bourgeoisie devoted their chil- 
dren to this study in which they found a wefi^pon of defence 
against the feudal regime, and with these laws, whose origin 
and antiquity rendered them doubly venerable, the legists 
were able to work out, in a thousand different ways, en- 
franchisement from the two great servitudes of the Middle 
Ages, — that of man, and that of the land. Several provinces 



168 CIVILIZATION IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 

were authorized to follow the Roman law as their municipal 
law. In those which retained their special legislation the 
Eoman law insensibly penetrated their habits of thought. 
Thus commenced in the thirteenth century the war of rational 
law, whether E.oman or customary, against the aristocratic 
\a^Y of feudal society ; a war sustained and directed by the 
legists, and which only ended in the great triumph of equality 
over privilege in 1789. 

The commons demanded only civil liberty ; they did not 
then dream of political liberty, and the most intelligent 
among them willingly accepted the equality of all under one 
master. The Emperor had in ancient times been absolute ; 
the legists made the king the heir of the emperors; and 
royalty employed the legists to administer France. Thus 
two powers confronted each other, — feudal aristocracy, which 
had possession of the soil and the military forces ; and 
royalty, which, supported by the third estate, counselled by 
the legists, endeavored to regain all the power which had 
slipped away from it, and to unite again to the crown the 
ancient prerogatives of imperial power. At the death of 
Louis it was already evident which of the two forces would 
prevail. 

Commerce. — Before the crusades, intercourse with Asia 
was rare ; a few cities of Italy, of Provence, and of Catalonia 
were the only ones not deterred by the distance ; but now 
those of Germany and France would follow the roads which 
had just been opened. The merchants of Lyons, ISTlmes, 
Avignon, Marseilles, went twice a j^ear to Alexandria to obtain 
the commodities of the East, which also reached France by 
way of Venice, Genoa, and Amalfi. With increased activity of 
trade, annual fairs were held, which were celebrated through- 
out Europe. The merchants of the southern towns traded 
with the rich manufactories of Flanders and the immense 
emporium of Bruges. Bordeaux already exported wines to 
England and Flanders ; the cities of Languedoc bought 
arms at Toledo, and leather tapestries at Cordova. The 
Basque sailors of Bayonne and Biarritz began the whale 
fishery. Paris had a hanse, or association for merchandise 
which came to her by water. 

Industries and New Cultures. — The crusaders also brought 
from the East new industries ; the tissues of Damascus, glass 
from Tyre, the use of windmills, flax, silk, some useful 
plants, as the damson plum, the sugar-cane, the product 



CIVILIZATION IN THE THIRTEENTn CENTURY. 109 

of which was to take the place of honey ; the orange, origi- 
nally from Farther India, and the mulberry, which enriched 
first Italy and then France. 

The use of cotton goods began at this time to become 
general. Paper made of cotton had long been known; 
linen paper was made by the end of the thirteenth century ; 
but it is only since the sixteenth that it has generally been 
substituted for parchment. Damascening, the engraving of 
seals, and coining were brought nearer to perfection. The 
application of enamel was learned, and the goldsmith's art 
made great progress. 

Corporations. — In the time of the Roman Empire work- 
men of the same profession formed associations among them- 
selves. The Germans, on their part, introduced the use of 
guilds, all the members of which promised to support each 
other and celebrated their union by festivals. The two 
institutions, merged, formed the corporations of the Middle 
Ages. The members of a corporation obtained from it 
mutual protection, and aid for old men, widows, and orphans. 
Each had a patron saint, festivals, and a treasury. The 
chiefs prevented frauds and watched over the observance of 
the regulations. These regulations required a long and 
strict apprenticeship, and assured to the members of the 
corporation the monopoly of their industry ; so that for 
each profession the number of masters was fixed by the 
corporation itself. The result was that there was no com- 
petition, because there was no liberty, and prices were main- 
tained at a high rate. But this severe discipline was neces- 
sary to an infant industry. 

Condition of the Rural Districts; the Merchants. — The 
corporations gave some security to the industries of the 
cities, but agriculture had no security. Forests and plains 
covered a vast extent of the country, and cultivated land 
was found only around the cities and walled towns and 
the strong castles and monasteries. For the laborer dared 
not venture into the countiy, far from any place of refuge. 

If the peasant was obliged to take such precautions, what 
had not the merchant to fear ? He was obliged to pay, be- 
side his custom-house duties, town-dues and toll, levied at the 
entrance of the provinces, at the gates of the cities, on the 
highways, at the bridges and entrances of the forests, and 
a payment, for escort, to each lord whose domain he crossed, 
in order to be guarded from robbery. .Marine merchants 



170 CIVILIZATION IX THE TIIIliTEENTH CENTURY. 

were equally subject to various exactions, and particularly 
to th-e odious rights of wreckage. When there was a ship- 
wreck, the lords of the adjacent shore appropriated all that 
was thrown up by the sea. Naturally, wrecking by false 
signals was common. St. Louis required the lords taking 
toll to take care of the roads and afford protection to travel- 
lers from sunrise to sunset. One result of prosperity and 
increasing security was a considerable advancement in popu- 
lation. The Church proscribing interest on loans, usurers 
increased in numbers. These Avere generally Jews. This 
was one of the causes of the general hatred against them. 
In order to conceal their wealth, and at the same time cause 
their money to circulate freely, they invented the letter of 
exchange. 

Universities. — Few abbeys of any importance were with- 
out a school. But the need of instruction became so general, 
that these monastic schools were not sufficient. Others 
were opened in all the great cities. But in the Middle Ages 
everything took the form of a corporation. At Paris, 
Angers, Orleans, Toulouse, Montpellier, the masters and 
pupils united and formed in each city, under the name of 
University, a body which had extensive privileges. The 
University of Paris received its statutes from Philip Augus- 
tus, in 1215. It was divided into four faculties, — of theol- 
ogy, of canon law, of medicine, and of arts ; the last taught 
grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, the trivium, and also the 
quadrivium, or arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. 
Roman law was principally studied at Orleans ; medicine 
at Montpellier. Important privileges attracted students 
to these universities. That of Paris numbered fifteen or 
twenty thousand students, who were not subject to the 
authority of the magistrates of the city, who could not be 
arrested for debt, and who very frequently disturbed the 
city by their quarrels or their dissipations, but from among 
whom arose, in the thirteenth century alone, seven popes, 
and a great number of cardinals, bishops, and scholars. 

Scholasticism. — The Middle Ages, in their profound faith, 
remained a long time without demanding of any one but 
their theologians the solution of the great problems which 
continually agitate the soul with regard to itself and God ; 
the mind, however, cannot remain forever shut up within 
the same formulas. Philosophy reappeared, but in the 
special form called scholasticism. 



CIVILIZATION IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. Ill 

St. Anselm, in the eleventh century, employed for the 
proof of religious truth the same processes of reasoning 
which Aristotle had used to discover scientific truths. 
Later, when the Spanish Jews had translated from Arabic 
into Latin many hitherto unknown works of Aristotle, he 
at once acquired entire ascendancy in all the chairs of 
philosophy. Unhappily the mediaeval mind was uncritical 
in its study of his methods. All science was reduced 
to the art of reasoning. Scholasticism was not a system 
of philosophy, a body of doctrines upon great questions ; 
it was much rather a certain manner of debating on all 
questions, by deductions from assumed premises. It re- 
mained a sort of intellectual gymnastics in which the aim 
was not the discovery of truth, but the victory gained in 
the combats of words, by the aid of subtle distinctions and 
a technical jargon. The mind was nevertheless sharpened 
and strengthened by these unproductive contests. 

The thirteenth century witnessed the long debates be- 
tween Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, who both studied 
and taught at Paris, with great distinction, divided between 
them the Schools and Christendom itself, and continued to 
agitate the whole of the fourteenth century through the 
disputes of their followers, the Scotists and the Thomists. 

They had been preceded in the school of Paris by the 
German Albertus Magnus. After these superior men, for- 
eigners by birth, may be mentioned Vincent of Beauvais, 
chaplain of St. Louis, who wrote an encyclopaedia em- 
bracing all the knowledge of his time, the Speculum Majus. 
Invention appeared with Eoger Bacon, an English monk, 
who also studied at Paris, who discovered gunpowder, mag- 
nifying-glasses, and the air-pump, or at least described them 
in his writings, and foreshadowed the reform of the calen- 
dar effected by Gregory XIII. It was also at Paris that the 
Spaniard Raymond Lulli published his Ars magna, a power- 
ful but vain effort to trace out a classification of the sciences. 

Astrology ; Alchemy. — One of the whims of this age was 
astrology ; it grew until the sixteenth century, and was not 
extinguished until the seventeenth. The astrologers pre- 
tended to read in the stars the destinies of human life. 
Another folly was that of the alchemists, who sought for 
the philosopher's stone, the means of making gold by the 
transmutation of metals. Yet these were the germs of 
astronomy and chemistry respectively. Witchcraft also 
abounded. 



172 CIVILIZATION IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 

The French Language. — In the thirteenth century the 
French language disengaged itself finally from Latin forms 
to assume its true character. It became the language of 
legislation. Villehardouin, the historian of the fourth cru- 
sade, Joinville, the biographer of St. Louis, wrote in French. 
A Venetian, translating into French a chronicle of his own 
country in 1275, excused himself for doing so by saying that 
the French language " is cvirrent throughout the world, and 
is more pleasant to listen to than any other." Ten years 
earlier Brunetto Latini, the master of Dante, wrote in 
French his Tresor, because "the French language is the 
most widely spoken among men." 

The Trouveres. — The French genius was at this time 
spreading over all the adjoining countries a flood of grand 
poetry. The voice of the troubadours had been silent since 
the Albigensian crusade had drowned in blood the civiliza^ 
tion of Languedoc. But north of the Loire the trouveres 
still composed chansons de geste, true epic poems, which were 
translated or imitated by Italy, England, and Germany. 
From the twelfth century the intellectual domination of 
Europe belonged incontestably to France. The most cele- 
brated of those trouveres was Robert W ice, "a clerk of 
Caen," who had written, about 1155, the B^-ut, a fabulous 
history of the kings of England ; Chrestien de Troyes (after 
1100), the author of the Chevalier au Lion; and lastly Rute- 
boeuf, a contemporary of St. Louis, the earliest type of the 
professional poet, poor but gay, sarcastic and bold. 

Fabliaux; Roman de la Rose, etc. — Eutebceuf is the best 
known of the authors of the fabliaux, the bold tales which 
the old French loved so well, in which priest and noble were 
not spared. These attacks are found also in the famous 
poem of Benart, a satire upon feudal society, and in the 
most popular work of its time, the Roman de la Rose, by 
Guillaume de Lorris and Jehan de Meung. 

We ought not, however, to make precocious revolutionists 
of these unrestrained story-tellers ; they are the press of that 
period ; we find in their verses an echo, as it were, of all 
the rumors of the day and all the emotions of the crowd ; 
also that good sense and rude feeling of justice which were 
later to raise Jacques Bonhomme from his low estate. 

Villehardouin and Joinville. — One thing in literature 
which belongs peculiarly to the thirteenth century is the 
appearance of French prose. But the first prose-writers of 



CIVILIZATION OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY, lid 

France were not writers by profession ; they were two dis- 
tinguished lords, both of whom had taken part in the events 
which they related. Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Marshal of 
Champagne, has left us the history of the fourth crusade, 
the Conquete de Constantinople. He writes as a soldier, in 
a strong, terse style, not without a certain military stiffness. 
The Sire de Joinville shows in his Memoirs of the seventh 
crusade more suppleness of style and more delicacy of mind ; 
he observes, reflects, and talks freely of his own feelings as 
well as of the events of the war. 

Art. — The triumph of pointed architecture was at last 
assured. The arch was still further elonga,ted, so as to 
bear higher, nearer to heaven, the vault of the temple and 
the prayers of the people. At this time were reared the 
vast and lofty cathedrals of Paris, Rouen, Amiens, Sens, 
Chartres, Eheims, Bourges, and Strassburg, and the Sainte 
Chapelle of St. Louis, at Paris. Romance architecture, heavy 
and massive, gave way before this newer style, which gave 
constant evidence of great boldness of conception and eleva- 
tion and fervor of religious feeling. Colonies of French 
artists carried the new style to Canterbury, to Utrecht, to 
Milan, and even to Sweden. Coarse and naive statuary 
decorated the churches, and stained glass produced magic 
effects in the windows. The miniature paintings, which 
ornamented the missals and hour-books, have left us precious 
masterpieces. 

The Friars. — The thirteenth century witnessed an impor- 
tant innovation in the Church, — the creation of the orders 
of mendicants. St. Benedict had promulgated, about the 
year 529, a monastic rule undenvhich all the monks of the 
West had successively ranged themselves ; this rule im- 
posed both manual and mental labor. The Benedictines 
associated agriculture with preaching, the copying of manu- 
scripts and teaching with prayer. The different orders of 
monks subsequently created continued more or less faithful 
to this idea. The order of the Fraiiciscans, instituted in 
1207 by St. Francis of Assisi, and that of the Dominicans, 
founded by the Spaniard St. Dominic at Toulouse in 1215, 
were of quite another character. The Franciscans and the 
Dominicans, exempt from the jurisdictions of the bishops 
and devoted soldiers of the Holy See, were required to live 
by charity, to possess nothing, to go out into the worl 1 
everywhere to carry the Gospel to those places into which 



174 CIVILIZATION OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 

the too luxurious clergy would no longer go, into tlie midst 
of the poor, in the alleys and highways, ^e influence 
exerted by these enthusiastic preachers upon the Church 
and the people was very great. The Dominicans, to whom 
the conversion of the heretics had been especially com- 
mitted, were invested, in 1229, with inquisitorial functions ; 
but the tribunal of the inquisition happily did not take 
root in France. Duns Scotus, Raymond LuUi, and Eoger 
Bacon were Franciscans ; Thomas Aquinas and Albertus 
Magnus were Dominicans. The Carmelites and the Augus- 
tine friars originated in the same century, and with those 
already mention~ed, formed the four orders of the mendicants. 
The austerity and exalted piety of these new monks, the 
learning of some of their doctors, aroused emulation among 
the old cenobites and even the secular clergy ; ecclesiastical 
discipline was restored. 



PHILIP THE BOLD AND PHILIP THE FAIR. 175 



CHAPTER XXVL 

PHILIP III. THE BOLD AND PHILIP IV. THE FAIR. 
(1870-1314 AD.) 

Philip III. (1270-1285) ; Aggrandizement of the Royal 
Domain. — Little is known of the reign of the eldest son of 
Louis, though it lasted fifteen years. Under him, however, 
may still be observed the upward march of royalty, which, 
by the extinction of several feudal races, united to its do- 
main Valois, Poitou, the counties of Toulouse and Venais- 
sin. But Philip III. abandoned to the Pope this last fief 
and half of Avignon. The Count of Foix was compelled to 
promise faithful obedience and to cede a part of his estate. 
The domination of the king of Prance was thus approach- 
ing the Pyrenees ; it even crossed them. Philip had the 
heiress of the kingdom of Navarre married to his son, and 
made an expedition into Catalonia, which, hoAvever, was un- 
successful. Its cause was a family interest. Philip en- 
deavored to punish Pedro, king of Aragon, for the assist- 
ance he had rendered the Sicilians in their revolt against 
Charles of Anjou, after the murder of all the French who 
resided in the island, in the massacre called the Sicilian 
Vespers (1282). ^ 

PhiUp IV. (1285-1314) ; Wars of Guienne and Flanders. — 
Philip IV., surnamed the Fair, who succeeded his father 
(1285), got rid of viseless wars, and occupied himself with 
enlarging his own domain by acquisitions within his reach. 
His marriage with the heiress of Navarre and Champagne 
had already brought him tAvo great provinces. A decree of 
parliament also ensured him the possession of La Marche 
and Angoumois. In addition to this, his second sdn married 
the heiress of Franche-Comt6. Thus by marriage, forfeitures, 
and conquests, the whole of France was being united to the 
royal domain. But there were still some powerful vassals ; 
the Duke of Brittany, the Count of Flanders, and especially 
the Duke of Guienne. Philip first attacked the last. He 
was a fprmidable adversary, because he was also king of 



176 PHILIP III. THE BOLD 

England, Fortunately, Edward I. was too much occupied 
with his Welsh and Scotch wars to cross over to the conti- 
nent. The royal army was therefore able to make rapid 
progress in Gruienne. Another army, led by the king in 
person, entered Flanders, whose count had declared for the 
king of England, and defeated the Flemings at Furnes 
(1297). The intervention of Pope Boniface VIII. brought 
about peace between the two kings. The Count of Flanders 
surrendered himself, and Flanders was reunited to the royal 
domain (1300). 

Flanders was the richest country in Europe, because it 
was the one in which most work was done. On this fertile 
land population had grown with the harvests ; cities were 
numerous, the people active and industrious, but attached 
to England, whence they obtained the wool necessary for 
their manufactures. The cloths of Flanders were sold in 
all Christian lands, and even in Constantinople ; and the 
cities of the Low Countries were the markets in which the 
commodities of the North, brought from the Baltic, were ex- 
changed for those of the South, which came from Yenice 
and Italy by way of the Rhine. Among so many cities, 
defended by their walls, and better still by a population 
accustomed to work and to frugality, but at the same time 
proud of its numbers, its strength, and its wealth, knight- 
hood had stood a poor chance, and there was but little 
feudalism in Flanders. All its cities had their privileges. 
It was not prudent to interfere with them. 

Financial Embarrassments of Philip the Fair. — French 
royalty was, under Philip the Fair, in that transitional 
stage which rendered it necessarily troublesome and op- 
pressive. The royal domain at that time comprised, in- 
stead of four or five cities, two-thirds of France. It was 
therefore necessary to have baillis, seneschals, and provosts, 
in order to maintain order and secure the execution of the 
laws, judges for the administration of justice, counsellors 
for government. All these agents desired payment for their 
trouble. War, instead of being made within a short dis- 
tance, was transported to the Pyrenees, the Garonne, and 
the Scheldt ; instead of a battle there was a campaign. The 
feiidal levies became insufficient. In order to keep them 
under the flag beyond the time fixed by the conditions of 
their tenure, the king offered them pay, and when necessary 
enlisted hired soldiers. Philip the Fair, continually short 



AND PHILIP IV. THE FAIR. 177 

of money, was obliged to resort to all sorts of means to ob- 
tain it ; as financial science was of late birth, the ill-chosen 
methods of doing this were to prove ruinous to the people, 
without being greatly beneficial to the government. For 
instance, he despoiled the bankers of the time, the Jews 
and Lombards, which caused them to conceal their money ; 
changed the value of coins, which made commerce impos- 
sible ; promulgated sumptuary laws, which would ruin in- 
dustry; taxed the clergy, and destroyed the order of the 
Temple, to obtain its wealth. One of his methods was 
honest and good; he sold liberty to many of the serfs of 
his domains, and commuted his dues of service for cash pay- 
ments. These considerations explain not only the reign of 
Philip the Fair, but the whole fourteenth century. All the 
kings of that period were in continual need of money, and 
did not know how to obtain it in any other ways than 

Another War with Flanders (1302-1304) ; Battle of Courtray 
(1302). — Philip had made Jacques de Ch^tillon governor 
of the Flemings. They revolted against him. Philip sent 
Robert of Artois with a numerous army to revenge the insult. 
Twenty thousand Flemings bravely awaited this chivalry 
near Courtray, behind a canal. The assailants advanced in 
bad order, sure of conquering, and not doing these villeins 
the justice to believe that they would dare to look them in 
the face. They had not even taken the precaution to recon- 
noitre the position of the Flemings. The first ranks of the 
heavy column of cavalry, sent forward at full speed, fell into 
the canal which covered the enemy's line, and the Flemings 
had only to plunge their long lances into the confused mass 
of men and horses to kill without danger to themselves. A 
sortie which they made from the two ends of the canal com- 
pleted the rout. Two hundred lords of high degree and 
6000 men at arms perished, among them the constable and 
the Count of Artois. 

The battle of Courtray, a defeat of the flower of the chiv- 
alry by the peasantry, had a powerful effect, but did not all 
at once cure the nobility of its presumptuous folly. The 
defeats of Cr^cy, Poitiers, and Agincourt were to follow; 
■ the feudal nobility was to lose the prestige which had so 
long surrounded it, and to see itself confronted by another 
army, that of the king and the people, which completed its 
downfall. 



178 • PHILIP III. THE BOLD 

Battle of Mons-en-Puelle (1304) .— Philip the Fair took 
active measures to repair the disastrous defeat of Courtray. 
In two months lie assembled 10,000 men-at-arms and 60,000 
foot-soldiers. The cities of Flanders brought out 80,000 
combatants. But nothing decisive was done on either side 
till 1304, when Philip attacked Flanders by land and sea. 
His fleet defeated that of the Flemings near Zierickzee, 
and he himself revenged at Mons-en-Puelle the defeat of 
Courtray. Yet in a few days they returned, as numerous 
as before, to demand another battle, and the king prepared 
to treat instead of fighting again. They promised him 
money ; they ceded to him all of Walloon, or French-speak- 
ing, Flanders, between the Lys and the Scheldt. On these 
conditions he restored to the Flemings their coiint, who 
promised only feudal homage. Thus French royalty re- 
treated before Flemish democracy, as German royalty was 
at the same time retreating before Swiss democracy. 

Quarrels with Boniface VIII. — From the time of Gregory 
VII. to Boniface VIII., the Papacy had furnished itself with 
powerful means of action, until the Pope could hardly fail 
to think himself superior to kings. At the time of the 
jubilee in the year 1300, the Papacy seemed placed on the 
highest pinnacle of power. Three years after, all had 
changed; the temporal power, so often conquered, was 
triumphant, and it had been decided that Europe was not to 
be a theocracy. This great blow was struck by the hand of 
France. Yet France had always deserved the title of eldest 
daughter of the Roman Church. She had been its right arm 
under Clovis, under the Carolingians, against the Albigenses. 
She had conducted the crusades, given asylum to fugitive 
Popes ; she was covered with monasteries, and her Univer- 
sity of Paris, her doctors, her St. Bernard, had been the 
lights of Catholicism. But interests which had been com- 
mon for so long became divided. War was declared under 
a man stern and merciless, whom no consideration held back. 

The quarrel between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII. 
had begun in 1296. In 1301 it was renewed, over the case 
of a papal legate who had defied the king's authority. The 
Pope threatened the king with excommunication for having 
dared to lift his hand against a bishop. At the same time 
he issued the bull Ausculta Jili, in which he reproached him 
with oppressing his people, clergy and laity, by cruel exac- 
tions, with annoying them by changes of the coin, with 



AND PHILIP IV, THE FAIR. 179 

trencliing upon ecclesiastical jurisdiction, with liindering tlie 
execution of episcopal sentences, and appropriating the reve- 
nues of vacant churches. Moreover, the pontiff hinted that 
there was a power in the kingdom superior to that of the 
king, that of the Holy See. Thus he believed himself in a 
position to judge, and to punish by the thunderbolts of the 
Church, the reprehensible acts of the prince; while the, 
latter, guided by the legists, who, according to the spirit of 
the Eoman law, recognized in the king an absolute power, 
claimed the right to intervene in the administration of the 
churches, and desired that the bishops, as well as the rest 
of his subjects, should be in subjection to his officers and 
courts. Philip declared that he M'"Ould recognize no authority 
but that of God as superior to his own in temporal affairs, 
had the bull of the pontiff publicly burned, and, to win the 
approbation of the nation, called to his presence the deputies 
of the States-General, divided into three orders, — the clergy, 
nobility, and bourgeoisie or third estate (1302). 

In the following year, the king again convoked the States- 
General, and counting on the firm support which he had 
received from these representatives of the country, carried 
the contest to extremes. The Pope, threatened by a general 
council, before which Philip proposed to bring him, prepared 
on his part a bull deposing the king. The latter anticipated 
him. One of his agents, William of Nogaret, and Sciarra 
Colonna, a Homan noble and a mortal enemy of the Pope, 
seized Anagni, where the Pope then was, and summoned him 
to abdicate. The Pope refusing, Sciarra Colonna dragged 
him from his throne, struck him in the face with his gaunt- 
let, and would have killed him if Nogaret had not prevented 
him. 

Death of Boniface VIII. (1304) ; Election of Clement V. 
(1305). — A short time after, Boniface died of shame and 
anger at the scandalous insults to which he had been sub- 
jected. His successor, Benedict XI., who tried to avenge 
him, died soon after, perhaps by poison. This time Philip 
took measures to control the election of the new pontiff. 
Bertrand de Goth, archbishop of Bordeaux, was nominated, 
after he had promised the king to comply with his requests. 
The new Pope, who took the name of Clement V., abandoned 
Eome, and in 1308 removed to Avignon, a possession of the 
Holy See, beyond the Alps, where he was under the control 
and at the disposal of the king of France. His successors 



180 PHILIP HI. THE BOLD 

remained there until 1376. The sojourn of the Popes at 
Avignon, which deeply unsettled the Church, was called the 
Babylonish Captivity. 

Condemnation of the Templars (1307). — Among the stip- 
ulations made with Clement, one was for the destruction of 
the Order of the Templars. The wealth of these warlike 
monks had tempted the avarice of the king, and their power 
was an obstacle to his despotism. They numbered 15,500 
knights ; together they could defy all the royal armies of 
Europe. They possessed in the Christian world more than 
10,000 manors and a large number of fortresses. In the 
treasury of the Order there were 150,000 florins of gold, 
to say nothing of silver and precious vessels. A strong 
organization held the Knights under the control of the 
grand master. What passed in their temples was not known ; 
but vague rumors told of orgies, scandals, impious acts, and 
terrible crimes. They were really guilty only of some de- 
generacy of morals, and their religious ceremonies were 
probably mixed, in the East, with the base alloy of heathen- 
ish practices. 

Secret orders were issued for their arrest (1307). The 
Knights, surprised, had time neither to consult nor to resist. 
Torture forced from them such confessions as it has always 
secured. Philip, wishing to cause the nation to take part 
in this great trial, convened the States-General at Tours ; 
the accusations and confessions were read before them, and 
the deputies declared that the Knights were guilty of death. 
Provincial councils condemned them. That of Paris caused 
fifty-four of the Templars, who had retracted their confes- 
sions, to be burned. Nine were burned at Senlis, others 
elsewhere. The Pope, at the council of Vienne, pronounced 
the dissolution of the Order throughout Christendom. All 
the money found in the Temple, two-thirds of the personal 
property, and the collectable debts, with a considerable 
number of domains, remained in the possession of the king. 
In Italy, England, Spain, and Germany, the Order of the 
Templars was abolished and its property partly confiscated 
by the princes. 

This same council of Vienne condemned several errors 
which had arisen in the midst of the Order of the Francis- 
cans ; that of the Spirituals, who regarded St. Erancis as a 
fresh incarnation of Jesus ; that of the Beguins, and that of 
the Eraticelli, antinomians and communists respectively. 



AND PHILIP IV. THE FAIR. 181 

Last Years of Philip the Fair. — In 1313 the great dig- 
nitaries of the Order of the Temple were taken from their 
prisons, examined before a papal commission, and condemned 
to imprisonment for life. But the grand master, Jacques 
du Molay, and another dignitary at this moment recanted 
their confessions. During adjournment of the court Philip 
had the two Templars carried off and burned at the stake 
(1314). In the king's own family bloody tragedies took 
place. His three daiighters-in-law, accused of scandalous 
deportment, were thrown into prison, where one of them 
was afterwards strangled, and another died of despair. 

Meantime public hatred of the government increased. 
As alterations of the coinage did not suffice to furnish 
resources, the king levied tithes and aids on various pre- 
texts, and finally resorted to arbitrary taxation. The gen- 
eral oppression almost brought on an insurrection, when 
Philip established a new tax upon the sale of all sorts of 
merchandise. Signs of the beginning of a union between 
the nobles and the bourgeois appeared. This time Philip 
retreated ; he withdrew the tax and promised for the fut- 
ure to make only good money. But this sinister king, the 
sternest who had ever yet ruled in France, though only 
forty-six years old, had already reached the end of his 
life (d. 1314). 

Under his reign the domain made important acquisitions ; 
the counties of La Marche, Angoumois, Champagne, Franche- 
Comt^, Lectoure, a part of Flanders, Quercy, Lyons, and 
a part of Montpellier. 

The Parliament. — With the progress of royalty the func- 
tions of the king's court increased. A division became nec- 
essary; it fell into two parts, the political court or Great 
Council, and the judiciary court or Parliament. Philip the 
Fair defined the organization of the Parliament. He pro- 
vided that it should assemble at Paris twice a year, for two 
months (1302). This sovereign court of justice, which 
claimed to exercise jurisdiction over the whole kingdom, 
was to be the great instrument of the kings in bringing all 
France under their absolute authority. The institution of 
magistrates appointed to defend the rights of the king and 
society in all cases, appeared to owe its origin to Philip 
the Fair. As he had selected the Parliament from the 
Great Council or king's court, so he separated from the Par- 
liament the Chamber of Accounts. There were then three 



182 PHILIP THE BOLD AND PHILIP THE FAIR. 

great bodies for the higher administration of the coun- 
try, — one judicial, the Parliament ; another financial, the 
Chamber of Accounts ; the third political, the Great Council. 

Ordinances, of Philip IV. ; Finances. — The numerous ordi- 
nances of Phili]3 the Fair which have been preserved, prove '' 
his activity in organizing the new administration which 
royalty owed to the country, since it had substituted its 
own rule for that of the feudal lords. If these laws often 
bear the impress of a despotic and avaricious mind, there 
are some of them which show a true spirit of government. 
One of them forbade private wars and single combat during 
the wars of the king. Another forbade the lords to coin 
money. It was decided that appanages, or lands ceded by 
the king to one of his sons, should revert to the crown in 
default of male heirs ; a decision of immense consequence. 

Philip created the frontier custom-houses, by imposing an 
export-duty on all merchandise, and established new taxes. 
Until then kings had had no other regular revenue than 
that accruing from their domains. The continual wars of 
Philip rendered the feudal aids frequently necessary. But 
as they could not be levied until after having been agreed 
to, the king was obliged to call regular assemblies of repre- 
sentatives from the provostships and bailliages, or even 
from all the royal domain. These assemblies gave rise to 
the provincial States and the States-G-eneral. 

First States-General. — The most important event in the 
administration of Philip IV. was the convocation, in 1302, 
of the first States-General. The most despotic of the 
French kings had been obliged to call about him the dep- 
uties of the nation, to obtain from them the aid which he 
needed, and to protect himself against the Pope by the 
approval of France. This was a tacit recognition of the old 
right of national sovereignty, so persistently kept in the 
background for centuries, and the men Avho, in 1302, fought 
for the king against the Pope, who, in 1326, determined the 
disposal of the crown, afterwards grew so bold as to en- 
deavor to lay lands on the crown itself. 



THE THREE SONS OF PHILIP THE FAIR. 183 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE THREE SONS OP PHILIP THE FAIR. 
(1314-1338 A.D.) 

Louis X. (1314-1316).— Three sons of Philip the Fair 
reigned one after the other : Louis X., le Hutin, from 1314 
to 1316 ; Philip V., the Long, till 1322 ; Charles IV., the Fair, 
till 1328. The first of these princes wore the crown only 
eighteen months, and only two important events took place 
during his reign, — an unsuccessful expedition against the 
Flemings, and a strong feudal reaction, which struck down 
the councillors of Philip the Fair, and attempted the de- 
struction of his work. The minister of finances of the late 
king was hung, and the nobles of several provinces secured 
the restoration of the privileges of which they had been de- 
prived : the re-establishment of their ancient courts of jus- 
tice, of trial by single combat, and of the right of private 
war, the abolition of procedure by written depositions, which 
rendered lawyers necessary, the removal of royal judges, 
etc. At the same time Louis, in order to procure money, 
solemnly declared that, " according to the right of nature, 
every man ought to be born free," and he therefore concluded 
that the serfs of the royal domain had the right to ransom 
themselves. Servitude diminished constantly from that 
period ; liberty became the rule, and bondage the exception. 
The last serfs, however, were not freed until the time of 
Louis XVI. Louis also readmitted the Jews, on condition 
that they should transfer to him two-thirds of the debts 
due them. 

The Salic Law. — Louis X. left only one daughter ; but the 
queen, some months after, gave birth to a posthiunous son, 
who was named John, and who lived only eight days. 
Should his sister wear the crown? It was not desirable 
that a foreigner should obtain France by marriage, and the 
States-General, applying to the crown the ancient rule of 
succession established for Salic lands, excluded the daughter 
of Louis X. from the throne. Thus the right of inheritance 



184 THE THREE SONS OF PHILIP THE FAIR. 

allowed to daughters in the case of fiefs was not recognized 
in the case of the crown. Philip the Long was proclaimed 
king instead of his niece (1316). This decision proved un- 
favorable to his own house, for he himself had only daugh- 
ters, who were set aside in favor of Charles IV., their uncle, 
and the posthumous daughter of Charles was in turn set 
aside in favor of Philip of Valois (1328). The way to the 
throne was thus opened to a new branch of the Capetians, 
that of the Valois. 

PMUp V. (1316-1322).— The reigns of Philip V. and of 
Charles IV. are marked by few military events, but by many 
measures for regulating the administration of the country. 
Philip V. three times convoked the States-General, and 
renewed the exclusion of churchmen from the Parliament. 
He instituted in 1318 the Council of State. Philip V. en- 
deavored to establish unity of coins, weights, and measures, 
and issued, upon finances, upon the organization of the 
Chamber of Accounts, upon the administration of waters and 
forests, etc., several ordinances which show a remarkable 
spirit of order and economy. The royal domain was declared 
inalienable. Like his grandfather Philip IIL, Philip the 
Long bestowed titles of nobility upon plebeians, an innovar 
tion which, by renewing the aristocratic body, assured its 
duration, but altered its spirit, separating it from the feudal 
possession of land. 

Threatened from above by the kings, feudalism was also 
threatened from below by the people. The bourgeoisie 
obtained from Philip V. the right of military organization ; 
and it was in this century, indeed under this reign, that 
the ecclesiastical parishes became civil communities. The 
country people had gradually united under the superinten- 
dence of an officer of the lord, afterwards under a syndic or 
a mayor, usually appointed by the lord, and who called 
them together to deliberate upon their common interests. 

Charles IV. (1322-1328). —Charles IV. published various 
regulations relative to commerce ; he increased the duties 
upon exportation, and drove out the Lombards whom Louis 
X. had recalled. Abroad, the king favored in England the 
revolution which drove Edward II. from the throne, and 
received the homage of the son of that prince for Guienne 
and Poitou ; in Germany, he was on the point of obtaining 
the imperial crown. But a sort of fatality seemed to pursue 
the house. Its princes died in the flower of their age; 



THE THREE SONS OF PHILIP THE FAIR. 185 

Philip the Fair at forty-six, Louis X. at twenty-seven, Philip 
the Long at twenty-eight, Charles the Eair at thirty-four. 
The people saw in these premature deaths a sign of the ven- 
geance of Heaven upon that family which had buffeted Bon- 
iface VIII. , perhaps poisoned Benedict XL, and burned the 
Templars. 

The Middle Ages themselves were at this period, at least 
in France, almost at their end ; for all that they had loved, 
the crusades, chivalry, feudalism, had ended or was perish- 
ing ; the Papacy, scoffed at in Boniface VIII., was captive 
at Avignon ; the successor of Hugh Capet was a despot, and 
the sons of villeins were seated in the States-General, face 
to face with the nobles and the clergy. 



186 



GENEALOGICAL TABLE. 



Genealogy of the Elder Bkanch or the Capetians. 

(The date which follows each name is that of death.) 
Robert the Strong, 866 



Eudes, ct. of Paris, 
and king, 898 



Hugh, ct. of Paris, and 
d. of France, 956 

Hugb Capet, king, 996 

Robert, 1031 



Robert, d. of France, 
923 

. I 



Emma, wife of 
Kodolph, k. of France, 

936 



Henry I., 1060 

PhUip I., 1108 

liouis VI., 1137 

liouis VII., 1180 

Philip II. Augustus, 1223 

ILoiiis VIII., 1226 



Robert, 

ancestor of the Ist Capetian 

house of Burgundy. 



liOuis JX. (St. Louis), 
1270 

_1 



Philip HI., 

1285 



Charles of Anjou, 
k. of Naples, 1285 



Robert, ct. of Clermont (6th son), 
ancestor of the Bourbons. 



Philip IV. the Fair, 
1314 



Charles, ct. of Valois, 
ancestor of the house of Valois. 



liOuis X., 

1316 



Philip v., 
1322 



Charles IV., 

1328 



Philip VI., 

1350 



SEVENTH PERIOD. 



Hundred Years' War; Renewal of Anarchy. 
(1328-1436.) 

CHAPTER XXYHI. 

HOUSE OF CAPET-VALOIS. — PHILIP VI. 
(1338-1350 A.D.) 

Power of the King of France. — Philip VI. of Valois, cousin 
of Charles IV., and grandson of Philip III., came to the 
throne by virtue of the exclusion of women, thrice asserted 
in twelve years. EdAvard III., king of England, grandson 
of Philip IV. by his mother Isabella, protested against this 
exclusion and claimed the crown ; but the internal troubles 
of England forced him to recognize the rights of Philip VI., 
to whom he did homage for his duchy of Guienne. The 
great victory of Cassel which Philip won, for the Count of 
Flanders, from the revolted subjects of the latter, gave the 
new royal house the prestige of military success (1328). 

NcA^er since Charlemagne had the king of France found 
himself so powerful. Direct master of three-fourths of the 
kingdom, suzerain of the kings of Majorca, Navarre, and 
England, as to the fiefs which they possessed in France, 
ally of the kings of Bohemia and Scotland, kinsman of 
those of iSTaples and Hungary, patron of the Pope, whom he 
held in honorable captivity at Avignon, Philip VI. was by 
far the most powerful monarch in Christendom. It was in 
the midst of this prosperity of monarchy and nation that 
the unfortunate war broke out which thrust France back, 
for more than a century, into chaos. 

Claims of Edward III. : Robert of Artois. — Circum- 



188 HOUSE OF CAP ET-V ALOIS. 

stances had compelled Edward III., in 1328, to recognize 
Philip of Valois ; but he had done so reluctantly. Philip, 
to check his ambitious schemes, aided the Scotch, who were 
at war against him. For France, as long as Scotland was 
independent, always sought and found devoted friends in 
that country. But Edward defeated the Scotch, and was 
ready to give similar aid to any enemy of France, when 
Robert of Artois arrived in England. 

This Robert, a prince of the blood, had claimed the 
county of Artois, held by his aunt, and after her by her 
daughters. To support his claims he forged documents and 
suborned false witnesses. On the trial it also appeared that 
he had probably poisoned his aunt and the elder of his 
cousins. He was condemned to forfeiture of his property 
and banishment for life (1332). He withdrew to Brabant, 
and, to revenge himself, tried magical arts against the king's 
son. Thence, in fear of a trial for sorcery, he fled to Eng- 
land, where he urged on Edward to war (1334) . 

Affairs of Flanders ; Arteveld. — Edward had a more 
serious reason for taking up arms. The Flemings were 
then the most industrious, the richest, and the freest people 
in Europe. Their cloth was manufactured from English 
wool, so that they were attached to England by interest. In 
1336 they drove out their count, who had violated their 
privileges ; and their popular chief, Arteveld, immediately 
invoked the assistance of Edward III., advising him to take 
the title of king of France, in order to remove all scruples 
of the Flemings, who might, perhaps, have hesitated to 
fight against their suzerain. The war, begun in 1337, lan- 
guished for several years. The French^ defeated in a sea- 
fight off Sluys, were victorious on land : finally a truce in- 
terrupted the strife. 

Affairs of Brittany (1341-1343). — In 1341 hostilities 
began anew in Brittany, where the two kings sustained 
each a different candidate for the ducal throne. The two 
claimants were Jeanne of Penthi^vre, who had married 
Charles of Blois, and John of Montfort. Charles of Blois, 
being a nephew of Philip VI., won his case. John of Mont- 
fort at once crossed over to England, and promised to recog- 
nize Edward III. as king of France and to hold Brittany of 
him as a fief, if Edward would swear to assist him. Then 
began one of those wars full of " encounters, fair deeds of 
arms, and fair prowess," which Froissart relates so enthusi- 



PHILIP ri. 189 

astically and so charmingly, but which inflicted terrible 
misery on the people. Charles of Blois, supported by a 
numerous French army, captured Nantes and took John of 
Montfort prisoner. But his countess, Jeanne of Montfort, 
valiantly maintained his cause in arms. 

Little by little the two kings found themselves entangled 
in these hostilities. In 1342 Edward himself repaired to 
Brittany and was present at the sieges of Vannes, of 
Eennes, and of Nantes. The French assembled a large 
army to meet him; but at this point the legates of the 
Pope intervened and induced the acceptance, in January, 
1343, of a truce which was to be observed till Michaelmas 
of 1346. 

Expedition of Edward III. to France. — Some time after- 
ward Olivier de Clisson and fourteen Breton knights of the 
party of the king of England were invited by Philip VI. to 
a grand tournament at Paris, arrested immediately, and 
beheaded without trial. Edward u.ndertook to avenge them, 
and the war began anew, at first in Guienne. In England, 
Edward had gathered together a considerable armament ; 
but where should he make his attack ? In Brittany, the 
French party had regained the upper hand. G-uienne was 
remote. In Flanders, Arteveld, on suspicion of plotting 
to deliver up the country to him, had been killed in his 
house by that same populace of whom he had been the idol. 
Finally the English fleet sailed for Normandy. The king 
landed with 32,000 men in July, 1346, at Cape la Hogue. 
A few days later he captured Caen after some resistance. 
An attempt upon Rouen failed : he ascended the left bank 
of the Seine and burnt several towns. His skirmishers 
even came in sight of Paris, and burned Bourg-la-Eeine and 
St. Cloud. 

Meanwhile Philip had assembled a great army and 
marched against the English. Edward crossed the Seine 
and retreated upon Ponthieu, to put himself in a position of 
safety behind the Somme. Philip had had all the fords of 
this river fortified and guarded. Edward forced the passage 
of Blanchetaque, but, recognizing that he could retreat no 
further, stopped, and, on the 27th of August, put his army 
in battle array on the slope of a hill near Cr^cy, with his 
troops in good order and thoroughly rested. 

Battle of Crecy (1346) . — Philip had set out from Abbe- 
ville in the morning to seek the enemy. A heavy rain 



190 HOUSE OF CAPET-VALOIS. 

accompanied the army during its entire march. When the 
English were discovered, Philip ordered a halt; but the 
great lords of France and their undisciplined hosts pushed 
on, until they found themselves in the presence of the enemy. 
The English, on seeing them approach, calmly arranged 
themselves in order of battle. 

The rain had injured the bow-strings of the G-enoese arch- 
ers in the French army. When ordered to begin the attack 
they were very weary with their march, yet they began it 
with great courage. But the English, who had protected 
the strings of their cross-bows from the rain, poured upon 
them a shower of arrows. Edward had mingled with his- 
archers " bombards which, with fire, sent little balls of iron 
to frighten and destroy the horses : and the firing of these 
bombards caused such tremblings and noise that it seemed 
that God was thundering, with great massacre of people 
and overturning of horses." The Genoese lost courage and 
began to flee. The men-at-arms behind them, at the king's 
order, fell upon them. This necessarily caused the loss of 
the battle, for it produced great confusion, by which the 
English profited. The blind old King John of Bohemia 
and his lords rode together into the midst of the enemy and 
found their death. The French princes, who had brought 
on the battle by their imprudence, paid for it bravely with 
their lives. There was one moment at which the efforts of 
the French seemed not unlikely to succeed. But the arrows 
of the English archers and the lances of their men-at-arms 
brought down a great number of knights who, with wearied 
horses, were in disorder attacking troops Vi^ell posted and in 
good condition. Philip of Valois, who had fought bravely, 
was finally forced by his companions to flee. 

Never had France undergone so terrible a defeat. Eleven 
princes, eighty bannerets, twelve hundred knights, and thirty 
thousand soldiers remained upon the field of battle, without 
counting two bodies of soldiers who, separated from the rest, 
fell next day into the hands of the English and were en- 
tirely destroyed. 

Siege of Calais; Eustache de St. Pierre (1347). — Edward 
continued his retreat, for he had no fortified place in which 
he could stop nor a single port to which reinforcements 
might come from England. He brought his army before 
Calais and undertook its siege. The city was strong, and 
he readily perceived that he could not take it by assault : 



PHILIP VI. 191 

he resolved to obtain it by famine. He threw up intrench- 
ments around Calais, in which the English were comfortably- 
established. Philip gathered together an army at Amiens, 
but with a despairing slowness. It was not ready till the 
middle of July, 1347 : then, finding all openings impracti- 
cable or occupied by the enemy, it dispersed. When every- 
thing within the place had been consumed, the besieged 
were forced to appeal to the generosity of the king of 
England. Edward demanded first that the whole popula- 
tion should surrender at discretion, but finally reduced his 
demands to this, that six citizens should come, in their 
shirts, and with halters about their necks, to bring him the 
keys of the town and place themselves at his disposal. 
These conditions were reported to the townspeople. '' When 
they heard the report," says Froissart, "they all began to 
cry and to weep after such a fashion that there is no heart 
in the world so hard that it would not have been moved to 
pity. Then after a space arose the richest burgess of the 
town, who was called Sire Eustache de St. Pierre, and 
spoke before all thus : ' My lords, great pity and great 
harm it would be to let die such a people as there is here, 
by famine or otherwise, when one can find remedy for it : 
and he should have great mercy and grace before Our Lord 
who should be able to keep it from such harm. I have so 
great hope of having grace and pardon before Our Lord if 
I die to save this people that I will be the first, and will 
willingly put myself barefoot and with a halter about my 
neck at the mercy of the king of England.' When Sire 
Eustache de St. Pierre had said this word, every one came 
and did reverence unto him of pity, and many men and 
women cast themselves at his feet, weeping tenderly." 

Five others arose and declared their willingness to share 
in his self-devotion. The six were led before King Edward. 
Regarding them with bitter resentment, he sternly ordered 
that they should be beheaded. " All the lords and knights 
that were there, weeping, prayed the king as earnestly as 
they could that he would have pity and mercy upon them : 
but he would not hear of it. Then did the noble queen of 
England a deed of great humility, being great with child, 
and weeping so tenderly for pity, that she could not stand 
upright. She threw herself on her knees before the king 
her lord, and said : ' Ah, gentle sir, since I crossed the sea 
in great peril, as you know, I have not asked or besought 



192 HOUSE OF CAPET-VAL0I8. 

anything of you. Now I humbly pray and desire of you 
as a gift that for the Son of St. Mary and for the love of 
me, you will have mercy upon these six men.' The king 
listened a little, and looked at the good lady his wife, who 
was weeping on her knees very tenderly, and his heart 
softened, and he said : ' Ah, lady, I had much rather that 
you had been elsewhere than here. You pray me so ear- 
nestly that I dare not refuse you; and although I do it 
unwillingly, see, I give them to you. Do your pleasure 
with them.' " 

Subsequently Edward ordered all the inhabitants to 
evacuate the town, and repeopled it with English. Soon 
after, Pope Clement VI. offered his mediation. In Sep- 
tember, 1347, the two kings signed a truce, to last ten 
months, leaving each in possession of what he then had. 

The Black Death (1348). — To the calamities of war 
was now added a still more terrible scourge. The Black 
Death, after having ravaged the greater part of Europe, 
arrived in France. "In many places," says a chronicler, 
"of twenty men there remained only two alive. In the 
H6tel-Dieu of Paris the mortality was so great that for a 
long time five hundred corpses were carried out each day 
in carts to the cemetery of the Innocents." The people 
accused the Jews of having poisoned the fountains and wells, 
and attacked and massacred them in several towns. The 
Black Death is said to have destroyed a third part of the 
inhabitants of Europe ; at Paris, according to a report made 
to Pope Clement VI., it carried off eighty thousand persons. 

Internal Administration; Acquisitions. — Philip instituted 
a tax called gahelle. An ordinance of 1343 decreed that no 
one should sell any salt in France save such as had been 
bought at the storehouses of the king at a price fixed by him. 
Duties on exports were raised, and another tax, ruinous to 
commerce, was imposed on all provisions sold in the interior 
and on articles of drink in the towns. The king's counsel- 
lors continued their war on privileges. In 1329 was insti- 
tuted the aj^peZ comme d^abus, which permitted appeals to 
the king from the sentences of bishops and recourse to him 
for redress of abuses committed by clerks. In 1338 an 
assembly of the States-General ordained the following ar- 
ticle : " The king shall raise no extraordinary taxes from the 
people without the vote of the three estates, and he shall 
take oath thereto at his coronation." This was a proclama- 



n 



PHILIP VI. 193 

tion of the great principle that the people should pay only 
those taxes to which their representatives had given con- 
sent. Philip VI., to escape from this obligation, made 
frequent resort to debasement of the coinage. 

One of the last acts of Philip VI. was the important 
acquisition of the province of Dauphiny. Humbert II., 
dauphin of Vienne, sold his estates to Philip in 1349. The 
eldest son of the king of Prance, from that time on, bore 
the title of Dauphin. The new province covered Lyons and 
brought the frontier of Prance at last to the Alps. The 
annexation of Provence was thenceforth only a question of 
time. Montpellier was also bought of the king of Majorca. 

Gunpowder. — At the moment when the kings obtained 
absolute power they received important aid from a new 
invention. Roger Bacon had invented, or at least first 
made known, the composition of gunpowder, which had 
long been known to the Orientals, and which the Arabs 
used in Spain in the thirteenth century. The first mention 
of it which has been found in France occurs in the year 
1338. The cannon of the time, composed of iron bands 
fastened together, were very imperfect. But soon no town, 
no fortress, will be able to shelter feudal independence from 
the king's artillery, and the least of foot-soldiers, armed 
with arquebuss, will overthrow the most powerful lord in 
spite of his hitherto impenetrable Milan armor. 



-4 



ti 

no 



194 JOHN THE GOOD. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

JOHN THE GOOD. 
(1350-1364 A.D,) 

King John; Charles the Bad. — The death of Philip of 
Valois, in 1350, made no change in the situation of the 
king. John, who succeeded him, was, like his father, im- 
petuous and violent, brave and extravagant, altogether an 
ill sort of a king. Such was his prodigality to the courtiers, 
that money was soon "w anting : to procure it, the king had 
recourse to the most singular expedients : among them, 
alterations in the coinage, even to the number of eighteen 
in a single year, so that the silver mark sometimes varied 
more than a hundred per cent in a month. These singular 
expedients were still far from sufficing, and John was obliged 
to convoke the States-General at Paris in 1351. Many 
complaints were made, some promises, but no reforms. 

Beside the two princes who disputed the title of king of 
Prance, there was a third who claimed to have more right 
to it than either of the others, — the turbulent, intriguing 
Charles the Bad, king of ISTavarre. Son of the daughter of 
Louis X., he would have inherited the crown but for the 
alleged Salic law. Meanwhile he claimed Champagne and 
Angoumois ; and Angoumois having be-^i given to one of 
the king's friends, he caused him to be*^%ssassinated. John 
then seized his fiefs in Normandy, an«^t Charles crossed over 
to England. The English had gaine-^'so much by their for- 
mer expedition that they were rea-io- to return to Prance. 
Edward conducted them thither by way of Calais in 1355, 
and ravaged Artois. His son, the Black Prince, entered 
Prance by way of Bordeaux, and plundered Languedoc. 
John did not engage in a single battle, but his expenditures 
compelled him again to summon the States-General. 

States-General of 1355. — The deputies were indignant at 
the frightful mismanagement to which the finances of the 
state had been subjected, and urgently demanded reforms : 
the establishment of an invariable coinage and the suppres- 



JOHN THE GOOD. 195 

sion of the exercise of the right of purveyance by the king's 
officers. The states engaged to furnish the king at once 
with thirty thousand sokliers and five million livres parisis 
to pay them for a year, by a tax falling on all classes alike ; 
insisting, however, that both the raising of the sum and 
its expenditure should be supervised by commissioners ap- 
pointed by them. This was nothing less than a revolution : 
for to vote and raise the taxes, to regulate and supervise 
their expenditure, was to exercise a considerable portion of 
sovereignty. 

The idea of paying a tax was very abhorrent to the nobles. 
The king of Navarre, now again in France, and the Count 
of Harcourt formed a cabal against it. John arrested them 
himself at the table of his son in Kouen, threw the king of 
Navarre into prison, and beheaded the Count of Harcourt. 

Battle of Poitiers (1356) ; Captivity of the King. — Mean- 
while the Prince of Wales had again taken the lield with 
two thousand men-at-arms and six thousand archers, had 
crossed the Garonne and the Dordogne, and sacked and 
ravaged Eouergue, Auvergne, Limousin and Berry. The 
king of France crossed the Loire and arrived at Poitiers in 
advance of the English army, so that he cut off its retreat to 
Bordeaux. The Black Prince, on approaching Poitiers, took 
his station on the summit of a steep slope planted with 
vines and traversed by thick hedges and bushes, and for- 
tified himself with palisades and ditches. It was impos- 
sible to reach the top of this declivity on horseback save 
by a path which scarcely afforded room for three horsemen 
alareast. The prince placed archers in the hedges which 
bordered this pat|H : upon the height, dismounting his men- 
at-arms, he rangijd them in order of battle, while before 
them he scattered the remainder of his archers in the vine- 
yards. 

King John had under his command one of the most bril- 
liant armies ever raised in France. Without counting his 
four sons, he had with him twenty-six dukes and counts, 
one hundred and forty bannerets, and about fifty thousand 
soldiers, of whom a large number were mailed knights. He 
had only to avoid fighting, and the English would have been 
starved into submission. He wished, however, to efface the 
shame of Crecy : but in fact, he doubled it (September 19, 
1356). 

The two marshals of France, at the head of three hundred 



196 JOHN THE GOOD. 

picked knights, rode forward into the narrow way which led 
to the heights ; but the English footmen suddenly attacked 
them from the hedges with showers of arrows, then ad- 
vanced from their ambush and slew the dismounted knights. 
In a little while this whole body was defeated ; and the 
fugitives, hurled back against the body which the dauphin 
commanded, threw it into disorder and panic. The Prince 
of Wales took advantage of this moment to charge with 
six hundred men-at-arms upon the flank of this shattered 
column, cut it in two, and dispersed it. The dauphin and 
his brothers fled with their escorts ; the second division, 
commanded by the Duke of Orleans, followed their example. 

Two-thirds of the French army were already routed with- 
out having fought ; but the third division, commanded by 
the king, was still twice as numerous as the whole English 
army. But John's unskilful management and the impetu- 
ous charge of the Black Prince neutralized these advantages. 
The king and his youngest son Philip fought desperately, 
but finally surrendered. The French left eleven thousand 
dead upon the field of battle. The English had lost but 
twenty-five hundred, and held as captives thirteen counts, 
an archbishop, seventy barons, and two thousand men-at- 
arms, withoiit counting prisoners of less importance. As for 
the principal captive, the Prince of Wales treated him with 
distinguished respect. Impatient to put his immense booty 
and his captives in a place of securit}^, he repaired to Bor- 
deaux and soon to London. 

States-General of 1356 and 1357; Etienne Marcel; the 
Dauphin Charles. — The news of this disaster threw the 
whole country into consternation and rage,- for after having 
undergone the shame of such a defeat, tfere were also the 
ransoms to be raised. The excitement was already great 
when the dauphin Charles arrived at Paris, ten days after 
the battle. He took the title of lieutenant of the king of 
France, and assembled the States-General. The assembly 
was composed of about eight hundred persons : of these, 
the Third Estate numbered more than four hundred, among 
whom the most active and the ablest was Etienne Marcel, 
provost of the merchants of Paris. The deputies, angered 
at the mismanagement of the royal government, assumed 
its place and demanded the institution of a council of 
prelates, knights, and burgesses, drawn from the number of 
the States, who should henceforward assist the dauphin in 



JOim THE GOOD. 197 

tlie administration of tlie kingdom, Tlie danpliin, terrified, 
adjourned tlie assembly. But tlie treasury was empty, and 
it was necessary to convoke it again. The provost, Etienne 
Marcel, and the bishop of Laon then made statement of griev- 
ances. In March, 1357, at a general assembly, the bishop 
of Laon demanded of the prince that he should remove from 
his person twenty-two of his counsellors and servants ac- 
cused of malversation, and give security against the revival 
of abuses. The most important demand was that the States- 
General should be given the power to assemble twice a year 
without other summons, to see to it that the laws were ob- 
served, and that they should have the right to name thirty- 
six commissioners, twelve from each order, who in the 
absence of the States should assist the dauphin in the de- 
fence of the kingdom. Other elus should be sent into the 
provinces to raise the taxes, pay the royal officers, assem- 
ble the provincial estates, etc. On these conditions, they 
offered a subsidy adequate for the raising and maintenance 
of thirty thousand men, reserving, nevertheless, to their own 
officers the keeping and disbursement of the money. The 
accord of the three estates in these commands made all 
resistance impossible, and the great ordinance of March, 

1357, in sixty-one articles, met the demands of the estates, 
at the same time improving the administration of justice 
and forbidding purveyance. 

In this series of measures many were excellent ; but the 
ordinance of reform, prepared by some few intelligent depu- 
ties, represented neither the work nor the thought nor even 
the desire of France. 

Murder of the Dauphin's Ministers (1358) ; Civil War. — 
Moreover, one could not hope that royalty, but lately abso- 
lute, should consent to abdicate. In April the dauphin, by 
order of his father, forbade all subjects of the realm to 
pay the aid decreed by the estates. He then revoked the 
ordinance, and declared that he would henceforth govern 
alone and have no more guardians. Finally, in February, 

1358, he published an ordinance, altering the value of the 
coinage. Exasperation was immediately manifested in Paris. 
The provost of the merchants assembled all the trades in 
arms. He marched with them toward the dauphin's hotel 
and demanded of him that he should at least devote him- 
self to the defence of the kingdom and protect his people, 
abandoned to the rapacity of the soldiers. Sharp words 



198 JOHN THE GOOD. 

were interclianged. Pinally Marcel gave tlie word to his 
followers, and they rushed upon the marshals of Champagne 
and Normandy, the principal counsellors of the dauphin, and 
slew them so near him that his robe was spattered with 
their blood. Charles, terrified, besought Marcel to spare 
him. The provost assured him that he was in no danger ; 
but he placed upon his head his own parti-colored cap of 
red and blue, the colors of Paris, and then immediately 
went to report, from the Hdtel de Ville, to the assembled 
people, what had been done. The bourgeoisie of Paris was 
about to enter into a contest against all the rest of the state. 
The nobility showed lively indignation against these bur- 
gesses who wished to rule all and whose plebeian hands had 
just shed illustrious blood. When the dauphin went to 
hold the provincial estates, the nobility offered him its 
services against the rebels of Paris, and he accepted them. 
Civil war began. The dauphin assembled seven thousand 
lances, and with them lived upon the country. Marcel had 
seized the castle of the Louvre ; he had the fortifications of 
Paris repaired and completed, a ditch dug, ballistse and 
cannon placed upon the ramparts, chains placed in all the 
streets, and mercenaries hired. 

The Jacquerie (1358). — .While nobles and burgesses 
attacked each other, the peasants rose in revolt. Upon 
them pressed almost the entire weight of the misfortunes 
of the country. The villages were the prey of the most 
insignificant partisan chiefs. After the enemy had passed 
through in pursuit of booty came the friendly troops, who 
pillaged for maintenance ; and the lords took the rest. 
They seized the furniture, harvests, cattle, and implements. 
After the vexations of the lords came those of the soldiers, 
released from service by the cessation of hostilities, but 
unwilling to renounce so lucrative a trade. The peasant, 
hitherto indifferent to the general affairs of the state, began 
to understand that the great battles were engaged in and 
lost at his expense. 

So when the peasants learned that the burgesses had 
begun war against the nobles, they believed it a good oppor- 
tunity to take vengeance for their long sufferings. They 
armed, joined, and attacked the castles. Then the most 
frightful scenes occurred; there was no mercy shown to 
age or sex : they tortured their prisoners, outraged the most 
noble women, even burned up little children, and left only 



JOHN THE GOOD. 199 

ashes and blood where they had passed. The nobles, sur- 
prised at first, gathered together, and an atrocious war 
began. 

Marcel joined hands with the Jacques; and when they 
marched against the nobles at Meaux, he sent them two 
companies of citizen soldiery : the people of the town also 
made common cause with them. Thus began the union of 
the people of the towns with those of the country. But 
Meaux had a fortress which held out stoutly. The Jacques 
were defeated, then followed up into all localities, and ex- 
terminated in frightful massacres. 

Marcel and Charles the Bad. — Marcel had released from 
prison Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, and induced the 
city of Paris to confer upon him the title of Captain. But 
Charles, who had all the barons' disdain of commoners and 
peasants, was a dangerous ally. In Jxily, 1358, the dauphin 
threatening the Porte St. Antoine, the provost of the mer- 
chants begged the king of Navarre to repulse the enemy. 
Charles the Bad rode out from Paris ; but instead of attack- 
ing the dauphin, he held a long conference with him: he 
was promised full satisfaction for all his grievances and four 
hundred thousand florins if he would deliver up the city 
and Marcel. Word came to Paris_,of these negotiations. 
The cry of treason was raised. Charles the Bad was de- 
prived of his title of captain, and left the city with his 
troops. 

Death of Marcel (1358) . — The situation of Etienne 
Marcel became critical. Provisions began to fail. A band 
of the citizens was attacked outside the walls by the king 
of Navarre, and seven hundred of them slain. They laid 
the blame of it upon their chief, who had entered before 
them, and accused him of having an understanding with the 
enemy. The bold and able provost was pushed to more des- 
perate courses from day to day. He promised Charles the 
Bad to deliver up to him the gate and bastion of St. Denis, 
in order that the prince might make himself master of Paris 
and massacre those opposed to him and, probably, have 
himself proclaimed king. The execution of the plot was 
fixed for midnight of the 31st of July. But one of the 
magistrates had discovered these designs and countermined 
them by another plot. He negotiated with two leaders of 
the dauphin's party, and the three, with their men, went a 
little before midnight to the Porte St, Denis, where they 



200 JOHN THE GOOD. 

found the provost of the merchants with the keys of the 
gate in his hands, and after a brief altercation slew him upon 
the spot. 

The Dauphin enters Paris again. — Two days after, the 
dauphin was readmitted into Paris. The victory of the 
royal party was complete : the king of Navarre himself 
made his peace, and Paris, after many executions, seemed to 
become again the loyal and submissive city that it had been 
before. But the remembrance of the time when the bur- 
gesses had dared to speak face to face with their master of 
justice and of good administration, was not lost. The crown 
had received a lesson: John and Charles V. gave up the 
practice of tampering with the coinage, and the latter at- 
tempted to make the States-General needless by instituting 
reforms. 

State of the Kingdom. — The situation of the kingdom 
seemed desperate. English and French freebooters traversed 
the country. The country people were reduced to turning 
the towers of their churches into fortresses. At night they 
withdrew to boats moored in the midst of the streams or 
into subterranean hiding-places. Labor was paralyzed ; the 
harvest felt the effects, and famine threatened the country. 

Meanwhile there was talk of peace. John had made a 
treaty with the king of England by which he abandoned to 
him the coast of the Channel, including ISTormandy; all 
Aquitaine, Touraine, and Anjou; also he promised four 
million gold crowns for the personal ransom of the king. 
It was the best half of France with the mouths of all her 
rivers. When this treaty was brought to Paris, the dauphin 
refused to carry it into effect, and convoked a sort of as- 
sembly of the three estates, which rejected the shameful 
agreement. 

The Invasion of 1359; New Mode of Defence. — In Octo- 
ber, 1359, Edward disembarked at Calais with his four sons, 
the principal lords of his kingdom, and six thousand mailed 
men-at-arms, with supplies and appointments of the most 
complete description. The weather was unpropitious to the 
expedition ; it rained incessantly. Arriving before Eheims, 
where Edward had long before announced that he would be 
anointed king, they passed seven weeks before its walls, 
unable to take it, but hoping each day that they would be 
attacked and would gain a great victory, as at Cr6cy and 
Poitiers. Finally, no one coming, they resumed their march, 



JOHN THE GOOD. 201 

going across country toward Burgundy. Thence Edward 
turned directly toward Paris, and lodged two leagues from 
the city, at Bourg-la-Keine. The English heralds offered 
battle to the dauphin, but he refused it. He wished no 
more of such warfare as the nobles had hitherto conducted. 

So the burgesses, secure behind the walls of their towns, 
the nobles in their castles, let the storm pass by. The whole 
brunt fell upon the peasants, who hardly dared to defend 
themselves. Yet their misery finally gave them courage, 
and despair lent them strength. They at last ventured to 
face these men in mail, before whom they had been accus- 
tomed to tremble ; and at several places the foreign aggres- 
sor began to encounter local popular resistance, more dan- 
gerous to him than great battles. Edward himself grew 
weary of a war in which no glory was to be had, because 
there were no battles ; no booty, because all had been either 
captured already or concealed in the fortresses. 

Treaty of Bretigny (1360). — The dauphin was still more 
desirous of sending the English home. Negotiations were 
opened at Bretigny, near Chartres, in May, 1360. The En- 
lish negotiators at first claimed the crown of France ; but fin- 
ally Edward contented himself with the duchy of Aquitaine 
and all its dependencies, given as an independent sover- 
eignty, and Calais with the counties of Ponthieu and G-uines 
and the viscounty of Montreuil. The king's ransom was 
fixed at the enormous sum of three million gold crowns. As 
guarantee of this sum John was to allow Edward to choose 
a certain number of hostages taken from among the noblest 
lords and richest burgesses of the kingdom. The provinces 
promised to the king of England were delivered up to him, 
in spite of the protests made by the majority of their 
inhabitants against this pretended restitution. It remained 
to find the money for the first instalment of the ransom. It 
was procured by a shameful expedient. ''The king of 
France," says the historian Matteo Villani, "sold his own 
flesh and blood." For six hundred thousand florins he gave 
his young daughter Isabella to the son of the most ferocious 
tyrant of Italy, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. 

Last Acts of King John. — Immediately upon his return, 
John decreed the levy of a new tax upon all merchandise 
sold or exported, of a tax on salt, and a tax on wine : in 
return for these he promised henceforth to give good justice, 
to put none but good money in circulation, to abolish pur- 



202 JOHN THE GOOD. 

veyance and other abuses which bore hard upon the poor. 
These promises deceived no one; nor did the tax suffice. 
It became necessary to have recourse to other expedients, — 
to borrow, to revoke all the grants made by preceding kings 
since Philip the Fair, and to give the Jews considerable 
privileges in return for payments. With the money thus 
obtained, the king, instead of suppressing brigandage, jour- 
neyed at great expense from town to town, to take posses- 
sion of the rich inheritance of the Capetian house of Bur- 
gundy, which the death of Philippe de Rouvre had just put 
in his possession. Thence he went down to Avignon, where 
he spent six months in festivities. But learning that one of 
his sons, the Duke of Anjou, had escaped from the English, 
with whom he had been left as a hostage, John, in obedience 
to chivalrous sentiments of honor, resolved to go and deliver 
himself up in place of h-^s son. He returned to London, and 
died there in 1364, at the age of forty-four. 

One of his last acts, more fatal to Prance than the battle 
of Poitiers, was to cede to his son, Philip the Bold, the 
duchy of Burgundy, which in the next century nearly 
caused the ruin of the kingdom. 



CHARLES V. THE WISE. 203 



CHAPTER XXX. 

CHARLES V. THE WISE. 
(1364-1380 A.D.) 

The Re-establisliinent of Order. — John's son, Charles V., 
rightly surnamed the Wise, was then twenty-seven years old. 
His previous conduct had not been of a sort to inspire great 
hopes. At Poitiers he had been among the first to flee : as 
a politician he had not played a more honorable part at Paris 
during the revolution. The weakness of his constitution, 
his studious tastes, even his moral qualities, did not give 
evidence of an ability to repair the misfortunes of the pre- 
vious reign. But around the king was gathered a group of 
captains, two illustrious Bretons, Bertrand Duguesclin and 
Oliver De Clisson, Boucicaut, and others. They were not 
such knights as the paladins of the preceding age : they 
knew how to strike vigorously with the sword, but they 
knew also other things. They were the first for many gen- 
erations in Prance who perceived that war is an art : they 
studied its stratagems, cared little for the scruples of honor 
which caused the defeats of Crecy and Poitiers, and set in 
their place skilfulness, shrewdness, even deception some- 
times, but also victory and the benefits of victory. And 
King Charles V. knew how to make use of such captains, 
ably directing them from his cabinet, in a war of a quite 
new sort, little glorious in outward appearance, but very 
profitable in reality, and which was to result in the terri- 
torial reconstruction of the kingdom. 

The treaty of Bretigny had not settled all difficulties. 
Charles the Bad maintained his claims and his animosities. 
Brittany had not ended its war of succession ; and the king- 
dom was terribly plagued with the grandes compagnies. 
Charles V. attacked separately each of these three impor- 
tant matters. 

Transactions with the King of Navarre ; Duguesclin. — The 
Norman fiefs of Charles the Bad aroused in the king the 
most serious uneasiness. With his two towns of Mantes 



204 CHARLES V. THE WISE. 

and Meulan he barred tlie Seine and might thus bring the 
English into the very heart of France. Charles resolved to 
take them away from him ; and this first war was managed 
as all other wars were to be managed during this reign. His 
oiiicers took possession of Mantes and Meulan by treacherous 
stratagem. Charles of Navarre, to avenge himself, sent 
into Normandy an army of Navarrese, English, and Gas- 
cons, luider the orders of the Captal de Buch. Duguesclin 
also appeared with a thousand men-at-arms and a body of 
archers, outwitted the Captal, defeated him in battle, and 
took him prisoner. Charles the Bad hastened to make 
terms, and accepted the essential condition which the king 
of France offered him ; namely, the exchange of his ISTorman 
fiefs for the barony of Montpellier, where at any rate he 
would be remote from the English. 

End of the War in Brittany (1365). — The war in Brittany 
dragged on until the battle of Auray in 1364. The kings 
of France and England had reserved a right to aid, without 
infringing the treaty, the two claimants who disputed the 
possession of the duchy. In virtue of this singular stipula- 
tion, the king of France put a thousand lances and his good 
captain Bertrand Duguesclin at the service of Charles of 
Blois, and John of Montfort received from the Prince of 
Wales two hundred lances, two hundred archers, and a con- 
siderable number of knights, under the brave and wary 
Chandos. The battle took place near Auray. The English 
and Montfort won the day. Duguesclin, in spite of all his 
valor and skill, was taken prisoner, and could escape only by 
paying a ransom of a hundred thousand livres (six million 
francs of present money). Charles of Blois was killed, with 
most of the great lords who accompanied him. This defeat 
of the French party in Brittany was not, however, attended 
with fatal consequences. The king entered into negotia- 
tions. By the treaty of Gruerande (1365) John of Montfort 
was recognized as Duke of Brittany : the widow of Charles 
of Blois received only the county of Penthifevre and the 
viscounty of Limoges. Duke John, restored by the Eng- 
lish, nevertheless came to Paris in 1366, and did homage 
to Charles V., it being left undetermined whether this 
homage was liege homage or not ; that is, whether the duke 
did or did not owe the king service against all persons. 

The Grandes Compagnies; the French in Castile (1366). 
— With the cessation of hostilities in Normandy and in 



CHARLES V. THE WISE. 205 

Brittany, another scourge made itself felt still more keenly ; 
namely, the grandes compagnies of freebooters, whose num- 
bers were increased by all the discharged soldiers. To rid 
the country of them, an attempt was made to send them off 
upon a crusade. Another enterprise suited them better. 
Castile was then groaning under the tyranny of Pedro the 
Cruel, who had poisoned his wife, Blanche of Bourbon, 
sister-in-law of the king of France. So, when a natural 
brother of Pedro, Henry of Trastamare, claimed the pro- 
tection of France, Charles V. eagerly offered him for his 
assistance in overthrowing his brother the grandes compa- 
gnies, which were put under the command of Bertrand Dugues- 
clin, ransomed from captivity for this purpose. No battle 
occurred. Abandoned by all, Pedro fled to the Moors of 
G-ranada, thence to Portugal, thence to Bordeaux, where he 
urged the English to restore him : he promised to deliver 
to the Black Prince the whole province of Biscay and six 
himdred thousand florins, which he had concealed in secret 
repositories. The English prince recalled to his army the 
English and Gascon adventurers who were with Duguesclin, 
crossed the Pyrenees at the head of a large army, and 
reached the Ebro without trouble : but the difficulty was, to 
obtain subsistence in these impoverished provinces. If 
Henry had had the wisdom not to fight, the English army 
would have been destroyed by famine. In spite of the 
prayers of Duguesclin he engaged in battle near Najara 
(1367), where the Black Prince and his ally gained a decided 
victory. Duguesclin was again a prisoner, Henry of Tras- 
tamare driven out, Pedro restored, and the Prince of Wales 
found himself master of a large part of Spain. 

The Black Prince in Guienne. — But after the victory, 
difficulties began anew. Subsistence had to be obtained, 
and everything was lacking. The treasures, deceitfully 
promised by Pedro, nowhere appeared. The English and 
their prince began to suffer in health. He decided to cross 
the mouatains again into Guienne. The Gascons loudly 
demanded their pay. Ear from being able to give them 
money, the prince was obliged to ask them for it. He 
assembled the estates of Gascony and announced to them 
that he was about to impose a considerable tax upon their 
lands. The estates replied that they would not pay it. 
The counts of Armagnac and of Perigord and several other 
barons of the province repaired to Paris and appealed to 



206 CHARLES V. THE WISE. 

King Charles against the conduct of the Prince of Wales. 
The appeal was received, and early in the year 1369 a 
criminal judge and a knight appeared at Bordeaux, and 
summoned the Black Prince to appear at Paris before the 
Court of Peers to answer to these complaints. "We will 
willingly appear at Paris," replied the prince, " since so the 
king of France commands us ; but it shall be with bassinet 
on head and with sixty thousand men at our back." 

Prudent Conduct of Charles V. — What had given the pru- 
dent Charles the boldness to take this decisive step was, 
that he was ready, and his enemies were not. A wise econ- 
omy had enabled him to make great reductions of taxation, 
on condition that the towns should fortify themselves. He 
had organized in many places citizen companies of cross- 
bowmen. Finally, in 1369, he had brought enough money 
into his treasury, enough order into the administration of 
the country, enough discipline into his armies, to venture 
to renew the war. Edward TIL, on the other hand, had 
thought only of enjoying his glory, or had engaged in enter- 
prises which scattered his forces and increased the number 
of his enemies. He treated Scotland with insulting arro- 
gance ; he laid claim to the county of Flanders in behalf 
of one of his sons ; he supported in Castile an odious tyrant, 
and threatened the independence of Spain. Cliarles V. 
carefully cemented anew tlie old and valuable alliance be- 
tween Scotland and France ; he wedded his brother Philip 
the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, to the heiress of the Flemish 
provinces ; he drew over to his side the king of Navarre, 
hitlierto undecided, and in Castile overthrew Pedro the 
Cruel, the prot^g^ of England. Duguesclin defeated Pedro 
at the battle of Montiel (March, 1369), and replaced upon 
the throne of Castile, Henry of Trastamare, wlio in grati- 
tude put the navy of Castile at the disposal of France. 

This series of alliances having been formed, the moment 
had come for France at last to repudiate the shameful 
treaty of Bretigny. In order to put the appearance of 
right on his side, Charles V., in May, 1369, summoned the 
States-General to Paris and laid before them the dispute 
between him and the king of England. The states gave 
him cordial support ; the court of peers, consulted in its turn, 
declared that King Edward and his son not having ap- 
peared before them, the duchy of Aquitaine and his other 
lands in France ought to be and were confiscated. 



CHARLES V. THE WISE. 207 

English Invasion. — Immediately the English landed at 
Calais, while the Black Prince prepared to make another 
attack in the South. A French army advanced against 
them, but refused battle, and retired as they advanced. The 
cities were well defended, none were taken, and the expedi- 
tion was forced to confine itself to useless ravages of the 
country districts. They returned in 1370 : the same system 
was inexorably maintained. "Never was there king of 
France who fought less," said Edward III., " and yet never 
was there king who gave me so much trouble." Charles V., 
in fact, feeble and in ill health, never took the lance ; he 
preferred books. He had the finest library of the time, 
nine hundred and ten volumes, carefully guarded in a tower 
of the Loiivre. Every year he read through the entire 
Bible. He maintained a correspondence with the Pope, 
and sent him presents. So pious a king of course had as 
his allies all the bishops of the kingdom ; and indeed most of 
them opened to him the gates of their episcopal cities. Even 
those upon whom the English had most entirely relied, 
such as the bishop of Limoges, the friend of the Prince of 
Wales, turned French, as the phrase then ran. This last 
defection exasperated the English. The Black Prince swore 
to have vengeance on Limoges. Taking the town by assault, 
he put the inhabitants to the sword; more than three 
thousand persons, men, women and children, were slaugh- 
tered that day. This dreadful exploit was the last achieve- 
ment of the Black Prince (1370). He languished for some 
years and died in England (1376). 

Decisive Successes of Charles V. — The English had an 
excellent body of infantry, archers whose arrows pierced 
the best armor, and men-at-arms who were almost as good 
as a regular cavalry, such was their spirit of discipline and 
their habit of concerted movement. Charles had to oppose 
them only a great throng of nobles, who, though brave, 
were quite undisciplined. It was the part of wisdom, there- 
fore, to avoid fighting with large armies : but in the interval 
between great expeditions he willingly allowed his knights, 
especially his brave Duguesclin, whom he had made consta- 
ble, to engage in some military exploits. The French, 
therefore, were not always retreating. Moreover, the king 
had his own kind of warfare, drawing over town after town 
by promise of commercial and other privileges. In the case 
of cities whose gates could not be opened by royal conces- 



208 CHARLES V. THE WISE. 

sions, his captains applied tlieir stratagems, fighting and 
negotiating. In 1372 Poitiers was recovered by the secret 
negotiations of Duguesclin, and Rochelle by means of a 
stratagem on the part of its mayor. Some weeks before, 
the Castilian ileet liad defeated an Englisli fleet before 
Rochelle. 

But the obstinate enemy reappeared in 1373. Disem- 
barking at Calais with thirty thousand men, the Duke of • 
Lancaster expected to conquer France ; but could only 
traverse it. His march was successful as long as he re- 
mained in the rich provinces of the North ; but in the poor 
and desolated central provinces sufferings and diseases be- 
gan, and when he arrived at Bordeaux he had but six thou- 
sand men. Disgusted with such warfare, the English did 
not return the next year ; the year after, they asked for a 
truce, which was prolonged until the death of Edward III. 
in 1377. Charles then broke the truce and struck direct 
blows. He put five armies in the field, and conquered all 
Guienne, while a Castilian fleet, carrying French soldiers, 
ravaged the coast of Kent and Sussex. In 1380 there 
remained to the English only Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, 
Cherbourg, and Calais. 

Attempt upon Brittany (1378); Cession of French Flanders. 
— The king of France attempted in Brittany that which had 
succeeded so well in G-uienne. In 1378 he summoned 
Duke John IV. to appear before the court of peers, and, as 
the duke did not appear, his fief was declared forfeited to 
the king. But the Gascons had given themselves up to 
France, while the Bretons had no notion of being subjected. 
Barons, knights, and squires signed at Rennes, in 1379, an 
act of confederation to which even the burgesses subscribed. 
John ly., at first driven out of the country, was recalled. 
All the Bretons engaged in the service of the king of 
France — and they were a large number — abandoned 
him. Old Duguesclin himself returned the constable's sword 
to him, and in March, 1380, a treaty of alliance was signed 
between England and Brittany. An English army landed at 
Calais, and again marched through the whole North of 
France unmolested. It had not reached Brittany when 
Charles V. died at Vincennes, in September, 1380. 

In 1369, to facilitate the marriage of the Duke of Bur- 
gundy, his brother, with the heiress of the county of Flan- 
ders, Charles had given up French Flanders to him. He 



CHARLES V. THE WISE. 209 

had indeed demanded of his brother an agreement, by which 
the duke engaged to restore this grant after the death of 
his father-in-law. But the Count of Manders survived the 
king, and Philip the Bold easily obtained from Charles VI. 
a release from his promise. Thus Lille was lost to France 
for three centuries. 

Government of Charles V. — The unwearied patience which 
won Charles his conquests, his rigid economy, a probity 
hitherto unknown in the management of finances, and 
useful regulations for the administration of the kingdom, 
have obtained for him the surname of The Wise. He made 
Parliament permanent, and gave up to it the old palace of 
St. Louis, which became the Palais de Justice. An ordi- 
nance of Charles V. fixed at the age of thirteen years the 
attainment of majority by the kings of France ; another 
separated the regency from the guardianship of a king, in 
order that the regent might not have at once both the 
young king and the kingdom in his power ; another, to pre- 
vent the dismemberment of the domaine royale, gave the 
king's sons pensions instead of appanages. 

The corporations began to be an oppressive element in 
industrial society, as the communes had been in political 
society. Charles attempted to establish the freedom of 
industry; but habits were stronger than the law, and the 
project was abandoned. In 1370 he published an ordinance 
authorizing the citizens of Paris to wear gold spurs and the 
other insignia of chivalry ; another, in 1377, granted nobil- 
ity to the provosts and councillors of the city. Attacking 
feudal prerogatives on another side, he ordered the demoli- 
tion of many castles, on the pretext that they might serve 
as strongholds for the English, and permitted forcible re- 
sistance against those who should exercise the right of pur- 
veyance in a manner contrary to the ordinances ; that is, 
without paying for the forage which they took and the 
carts of which they made use. An ordinance of 1372 re- 
served to the crown the exclusive right to issue charters 
for communes, other municipal franchises, and patents of 
nobility. 

Finance. — There are shadows in the pictures of this 
reign, in general so restorative. Charles crushed out the ' 
spirit of liberty. For his wars, his constructions, and his 
negotiations, he needed much money, and he made the bur- 
dens of taxation still more heavy : if the permanence of the 



210 CHARLES V. THE WISE. 

land tax (the taille) is due to his grandson, that of the in- 
direct taxes (tlie aides) was established by him. It is only- 
fair to add that the aides, levied upon articles of consump- 
tion, bore indirectly upon all alike, the noble and the 
ecclesiastic as well as the commoner. But he was the first 
to compel each family to buy at the royal storehouses the 
quantity of salt which it was supposed to require. Instead 
of paying a salary to the members of Parliament, he gave 
them for their pay the fines which they might impose. 

The States-G-eneral of 1356-57 had instituted commissaries- 
general, and under them elus, for the assessment and levy of 
the taxes. Charles V. maintained these ofi&cers as royal 
functionaries. The elus watched over the assessment as 
well as the levy of the taxes, and judged in the first in- 
stance contentious cases in financial affairs : the commis- 
saries-general for finance had general supervision of the 
receipts, and the commissaries-general for justice judged in 
the last resort cases concerning taxes. These last formed 
the Cour des Aides, which received its final form from 
Charles VII. 

Public Works ; Literature. — In spite of his economy, 
Charles V. was a great builder. He began the Bastile, re- 
paired and enlarged the wall of Paris and the Louvre of 
Philip Augustus ; he erected the Hdtel St. Pol, etc. He 
planned a union of the Loire and the Seine by canal, a pro- 
ject Avhich was carried out two centuries later by Henry IV. 
He encouraged letters, caused the Bible, Aristotle, St. 
Augustine, and Livy to be translated, and had several im- 
portant treatises composed. His collection of nine hundred 
and ten volumes was the germ of the royal library, and he 
established at Paris a college of astronomy and medicine. 
Chief among the writers of the time was Proissart, a Flem- 
ing (1337-1410), who spent his life at the courts of the 
princes and nobles of England as well as of France, takmg 
down from their lips the picturesque tales which he has pre- 
served to us. His book is one of the most precious monu- 
ments of the French language and of French history. But 
we must not expect of him either very high morality or 
very strong patriotism. The historian of Charles V. 
was Christine de Pisan, daughter of the king's astrologer. 
Her book, far inferior to those of Froissart or Comines, yet 
marks the transition from the one to the other. 

In spite of Froissart and the king's patronage of letters, 



CHARLES V. THE WISE. 211 

the age is none tlie less an age of decadence, a time of stop- 
page in the progress of the world : there were no more high 
thoughts, no more great teachers ; intellectual force and 
moral force were both lessened. The Middle Ages were 
already in their decline. 

The Great Schism. — The double election of Urban VI. 
and Clement VII. in 1378 began the Western schism, which 
lasted seventy-eight years, divided Christianity into two 
great factions, and prepared the way for the Eeformation. 
France, especially the University of Paris, made the most 
laudable efforts to restore unity and peace in the Church. 

Maritime Discoveries. — In this reign, and consequently 
long before the Portuguese, the men of Dieppe, who then had 
an extensive commerce, discovered G-uinea, from which they 
brought back pepper, gold dust and ivory. In 1400 the 
Norman Jean de Bethencourt formed a settlement in the 
Canaries. 



212 CHARLES ri. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

CHARLES VI. 
(1380-1422,) 

The Royal Family. — The death of Charles V. at the 
early age of forty-three was a calamity to the country ; for 
his eldest son was not yet twelve years old, and this child 
was entirely in the power of his uncles, the dukes of Anjou, 
£)f Burgundy, and of Berry, selfish princes, — the first, noto- 
rious for his cruelty as governor of Languedoc, interested only 
in securing the kingdom of Naples ; the second, in Flanders, 
of which he was the heir ; the third, in his amusements and 
his treasures. Charles VI. had, on his mother's side, a 
fourth uncle, the Duke of Bourbon, an excellent prince, 
who had, however, no influence : also a brother, the duke of 
Orleans. 

Rapacity of the King's Uncles ; Revolts. — Scarcely had 
Charles died when the Duke of Anjou seized his treasures. 
His brothers also seized what they could : the Duke of Bur- 
gundy assumed the government of Normandy and Picardy ; 
the Duke of Berry took Languedoc and Aquitaine. He 
already had Berry, Auvergne, and Poitou as appanages. 
Thus the third part of the kingdom was delivered up to his 
rapacity. 

The beginning of a • new reign was always a moment of 
hope. The abolition of certain taxes was demanded, and. 
the duke promised to suppress all those which had been 
established since the time of Philip the Fair. One might 
as well have promised to abandon the task of governing 
France. The regent had no notion of keeping his word. A 
tax on all merchandise sold was, in fact, proclaimed. The 
tax-gatherers appeared in the market. A furious tumult 
arose. The insurgents rushed to the H6tel de Ville, to the 
Arsenal, and seized for weapons some new mallets which 
had been stored there in view of an attack by the English. 

The maillotins were for a moment masters of the town. 
But soon the prince gained the upper hand, caused the 



CHARLES ri. 213 

most seditious to be secretly executed, and inflicted upon 
the others ruinous fines, with the proceeds of which tlae 
Duke of Anjou set out from Italy. But the new tax was 
withdrawn. 

The Parisian outbreak spread rapidly to other towns. 
The Duke of Berry had scarcely appeared in his province 
of Lang-uedoc when a revolt broke out there. He put it 
down with much cruelty, and the peasants began anew a 
sort of jacquerie. They fled to the Ce venues, and thence 
made raids upon the nobles and the rich, showing no quarter 
to those who had not callous hands. They were called the 

War in Flanders; Battle of Eoosebeke (1382). — The 
Flemings had risen at the end of the preceding reign against 
their French count, who had violated the municipal liber- 
ties of the country. Pierre Dubois and Philip Arteveld, the 
son of the famous James, had with success directed the 
insurrection of the White Hoods, and the battle of Bruges 
in May, 1382, had overthrown the last hopes of Count 
Louis. Deputies entrusted with full powers by the cities of 
Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges had gone to King Richard II. of 
England, and had offered to recognize him as king of France 
if he would give them assistance. It seemed as though, for 
a quarter of a century, the spirit of revolt was everywhere 
arising in Europe among the citizen class. There was the 
rising of Eienzi at Rome, that of Wat Tyler in England, 
and !^tienne Marcel, and the Jacques, the maiUotins, the 
tuchins, the White Hoods. 

The king of France set out for Flanders with a large 
army. At his approach all the Flemish cities made their 
submission, and the men of Ghent had no resource but to 
make a desperate attack, which they did at Eoosebeke in 
November, 1382. Tied one to another, in order to make 
sure of not retreating, they advanced in a single phalanx. 
This manoeuvre had succeeded at Bruges in the fight against 
a less nimierous host. But now the wings of the great 
.French army swung around and attacked the phalanx u];(on 
its flanks. The lances of the knights were longer than the 
Flemish spears, and the Flemings were unable to reach their 
enemies. Disorder soon became general in their ranks. At 
the end there were twenty-six thousand dead upon the 
field, including the entire phalanx of Ghent, and Arteveld 
among them. Flanders was not overcome, for the men of 



214 CHARLES VI. 

Glient still lield out for .two years longer. But the nobility 
had at last avenged the shame of its defeat at Courtray. 

Executions at Paris and at Rouen. — The Parisian insur- 
rection, as well as the revolt of Ghent, had been defeated 
at Eoosebeke. The Parisians perceived that they could 
expect little tenderness. Yet they hoped that, if they 
shoAved their strength, nothing serious would be attempted 
against them. They came out to meet the king, to the 
number of twenty thousand armed men, and ranged them- 
selves in battle array at the foot of Montmartre. But, 
informed by the constable that the king wished them to 
return to their homes, they obeyed (1383). Next day 
the king arrived. Executions began at once : first, the de- 
struction of the liberties of the city, for it was deprived of 
its franchises and its elective magistrates, its corporations 
and guilds were suppiessed, the chains which secured its 
streets and its arms were taken away. Then followed the exe- 
cution of persons ; arrests, summary judgments, immediate 
hanging. Three hundred of the richest citizens were 
drowned, hanged, and beheaded, almost without form of 
trial. 

Then the citizens were assembled: a long list of their 
misdeeds was read to them : the punishments which they 
had deserved were enumerated. When their terror had 
been raised to its height, the king's uncles cast themselves 
at his feet and besought him for mercy. He yielded to the 
appeal, and caused announcement to be made by his chan- 
cellor that he would commute the punishments to fines. 
Paris did not escape without paying four hundred thousand 
francs (perhaps as much as twenty millions would be now). 
In other places there were similar executions, and espe- 
cially enormous fines, "and all," says Froissart, "went to. 
the profit of the Duke of Berry and the Duke of Burgundy, 
for the young king was under their control." The upper 
bourgeoisie was decimated and ruined, and when, thirty 
years after, the public misfortunes caused a new revolution 
to be attempted, they were not in condition to take the lead 
in it, and were obliged to leave its control to violent men 
who would deluge Paris with blood. 

Union of Flanders and Burgundy (1384) . — In 1384 the 
Count of Flanders died, and the Duke of Burgundy, his 
son-in-law, inherited his vast domains. Henceforward the 
house of Burgundy turned all its attention toward these 



CHARLES ri. 215 

rich provinces and little by little forgot both the blood from 
which it sprang, and France, which had originated its great- 
ness. 

The next year was spent in vast preparations for a descent 
upon England. Fourteen hundred vessels were gathered 
together. But the favorable moment for the passage was 
allowed to go by : it became necessary to give up the project, 
after enormous expenditures. 

The King assumes the Government (1388). — On returning 
from a fortunate expedition against the Duke of Gelderland, 
the king assembled a great council at Rheims, and asked 
those present to give him their advice touching the conduct 
of public affairs. The cardinal of Laon urged him to take 
into his own hands the management of all that concerned 
the ministry of war and the affairs of his household. Others 
supported the cardinal's advice. Charles VI. declared his 
determination to follow it, and thanked his uncles for the 
good services they had rendered him. Scarcely had the king 
left Eheims, when the cardinal of Laon died of poison. 

The former counsellors of Charles Y., the lesser men, the 
marmousets, as the great lords disdainfully called them, 
Olivier de Clisson and others, undertook, as ministers of 
State, the direction of affairs. The new administration was 
wise, economical, promoting order within and peace without : 
but the king was none the less extravagant. Fetes were 
incessant. The most serious enterprises became occasions 
of festivity. The ministers attempted to combat these 
disorders or to diminish their disastrous effects : they econ- 
omized in the expenses of the State to support the extrava- 
gances of the king, yet the State was a gainer by the 
arrangement. They restored to Paris its provost, gave the 
burgesses of the city the right of acquiring fiefs, as if they 
had been nobles, and deprived the Duke of Berry of his 
government of Languedoc, from which four hundred thou- 
sand inhabitants had fled into Aragon. 

For four years these " lesser men " governed the kingdom, 
while the king's uncles and the greatest lords of France 
were removed from the management of affairs. These lords 
naturally desired strongly to make an end of such a regime. 
An Angevin lord, Pierre de Craon, a mortal enemy of the 
constable Olivier de Clisson, placed his personal hatred at 
the service of the political resentments of the aristocracy. 

Murder of Clisson (1392) . — One evening in June, 1392, 



:316 CHARLES ri. 

on departing from a fete given at the H6tel St. Pol, the 
ionstable, at a very late hour, took leave of the king and 
;he Dnke of Orleans, and with eight footmen, of whom two 
carried torches, proceeded toward the Eue Ste. Catherine. 
There Pierre de Craon was waiting for him, with forty ruf- 
fians on horseback. When Clisson appeared. Pierre de 
Craon's men attacked his footmen, extinguished their 
torches, and attacked the constable. The latter tried to 
defend himself, but was soon wounded and thrown from his 
horse. He fell against the half-open door of a baker, which 
yielded. This saved him. The assassins supposed him to 
be dead, and hastily fled with Craon. Hearing the news of 
the assassination, the king repaired to the baker's house, 
where Clisson was beginning to recover consciousness, and 
vehemently declared that he should be avenged. 

Insanity of the King (1392). — Pierre de Craon fled to 
the Duke of Brittany, who, summoned by the king to deliver 
up the traitor, concealed Craon and pretended to know noth- 
ing of the affair. Charles immediately assembled an army, 
swearing that he would take no rest until he had punished 
all these rebellions. The dukes of Burgundy and Berry 
tried, however, to delay this war, because of their hatred of 
Clisson. But the king paid no heed to his uncles' attempts 
at delay and their manifest reluctance, nor to the fears which 
his physicians expressed as to his health : he conducted his 
army as far as Le Mans. As he was passing through the 
forest, a man clothed in white rushed out, and seizing the 
horse's bridle, cried, " Stop, noble king, go no further ; thou. 
art betrayed." This sudden apparition startled the king ; 
a little later the page who was carrying the king's lance 
fell asleep upon his horse : the lance fell and struck a hel- 
met with a loud noise. At this sound of arms the king drew 
his sword and cried, "Down, down with the traitors !." He 
rushed with his drawn sword against his brother, the Duke 
of Orleans, who with difficulty escaped him. Finally, one 
of his knights coming up from behind succeeded in seizing 
him, and he was disarmed. He recognized no one. 

Re-establishment of the Government of the Princes. — Some 
days afterward, Olivier de Clisson, having claimed payment 
from the Duke of Burgundy for the knights who had fol- 
lowed the king upon his last expedition, the duke made 
violent ;threats against him. Clisson hastily repaired to his 
castle in Brittany, while Parliament declared him guilty of 



CHARLES VI. 217 

extortion, banished him from the kingdom, and imposed 
upon him a fine of a hundred marks of silver. The other 
ministers fled or were imprisoned in the Bastile. The king's 
uncles were thus restored to full possession of the govern- 
ment. They interested themselves in efforts to end the 
great schism, but with no success. They signed a truce of 
twenty-eight years with England in 1395, and gave a daugh- 
ter of Charles VI. in marriage to King Richard II. ; but in 
1399 the English deposed their king, and this well-conceived 
alliance was rendered useless. 

Crusade of Nicopolis (1396). — Forty years before, the 
Ottoman Turks had crossed the Bosporus, conquered Adrian- 
ople, and a part of the valley of the Danube ; and already 
they were threatening Hungary. A crusade was resolved 
upon : it was put under the command of the young Count 
of Nevers, afterward known as John the Fearless, Duke of 
Burgundy. They gayly descended the valley of the Danube : 
when they arrived near the Turks at ISTicopolis, neglecting 
the advice of King Sigismund of Hungary, they rushed for- 
ward in disorder and were received by the formidable jani- 
zaries whom the sultan Amurath had lately organized, and 
who made short work of troops breathless and disordered. 
Ten thousand captives were slain in the presence of sultan 
Bajazet. 

Isabella of Bavaria. — Isabella of Bavaria was but fifteen 
years old when she came from Germany to marry Charles 
VI. Without relatives, and without guidance in the midst 
of a corrupt 'court, she quickly acquired its- manners, and 
learned to care only for luxury and pleasure. From the 
pursuit of pleasure she descended to debauchery. Charged 
with the care of the king's person during his imbecility, she 
used the authority which her husband's unhappy situation 
gave her, to satisfy her passions, her vicious inclinations, 
her vengeance. 

Murder of the Duke of Orleans (1407).— Philip the Bold, 
Duke of Burgundy, retained supreme power until his death 
in 1404. His son, John the Fearless, attempted to succeed 
to his influence in the government ; but the king's brother, 
the Duke of Orleans, who enjoyed a complete ascendency 
over the mind of the queen, and through her was master of 
the king and the dauphin, and was himself the head of the 
nobility and a brilliant knight, would not yield his authority 
to any one. Soon there arose between him and John the 



218 CHARLES VI. 

Fearless a rivalry wMcIl threatened to become civil war in 
the very midst of Paris. Each assembled his men-at-arms 
and fortified his hotel. Fighting was about to begin, when 
the old Duke of Berry interposed, brought the Duke of Bur- 
gundy into the sick-room of the Duke of Orleans, caused 
them to embrace, to take the communion together, and to 
eat together. Three days after (November, 1407) Louis 
of Orleans died, assassinated by John the Fearless. 

For four months the duke had been meditating this mur- 
der. He had bought a house in the city, to be used, he said, 
for storage. In this he concealed seventeen assassins. It 
was upon the route which the Duke of Orleans was accus- 
tomed to take in returning from the king's house to his 
own. On a dark night in November, as the duke was 
returning home with few attendants, the assassins rushed 
out upon him and murdered him. A woman at her win- 
dow saw, by the light of the torches, a tall man come out 
of the house bought by the Duke of Burgundy, and satisfy 
himself that the duke was dead. 

Next day John the Fearless came, with the other princes, 
to view the dead body. " Never," he declared on seeing the 
corpse, "never was a fouler murder committed in this 
realm." Some days later, however, when the provost of 
Paris declared to the council that he had no doubt of being 
able to discover the culprits, if he were given permission to 
search the hotels of the princes, John the Fearless turned 
pale, and, taking aside the Duke of Berry and the king of 
Sicily, said, " It is I who did it ; the devil tempted me." 

This first faintheartedness soon passed away, and the 
Duke of Burgundy resolved to avow and justify his crime. 
Next day, in fact, he boldly appeared, in order to take his 
seat in the council of the princes. Being refused admission, 
he hastened to his territories in Flanders, whence he caused 
it to be declared in discourse, sermon, and writing, that he 
had only anticipated the designs of the Duke of Orleans. 
A Franciscan friar. Dr. Jean Petit, was, next year, charged 
to demonstrate the rightfulness of the deed. After a bloody 
victory over the Li^geois, at Hasbain (1408), the duke re- 
turned t£) Paris, and obtained from the king letters of pardon 
by which Charles VI. declared that he entertained no dis- 
pleasure against him for having removed from the world 
his brother, the Duke of Orleans (March, 1409). 

Armaguacs and Burgundians (1410). — The administra- 



CHARLES VI. 219 

tion of the Dvike of Orleans had been as deplorable as his 
morals. The Duke of Burgundy, on the other hand, stoutly- 
opposed the creation of any new taxes ; he restored to the 
Parisians their ancient free constitution, the right to elect 
their provost and to organize in military companies under 
elected captains, and even that of possessing noble fiefs, 
with the x^rivileges attached thereto. Thus he became ex- 
tremely popular. It was the common people who made up, 
at Paris, the streng-th of the Burgundian party. A consider- 
able portion of the nobility turned against him ; the aveng- 
ers of the Duke of Orleans ranged themselves under the 
banner of the Count of Armagnac, father-in-law of one of 
his young sons ; and from him the party received its 
name (1410). So, with the king demented, the queen de- 
spised and incapable, the dauphin likely, by reason of his 
excesses, to end as his father had done, the first prince of 
the blood stained with an infamous murder, no government, 
partisan faction in arms against each other, war without 
and within, — such was the unhappy state of France. Be- 
tween 1410 to 1412 the two factions met twice in arms, and 
twice made treaties of peace. Each had made advances to 
the English, in order to win over to its side the enemy of 
the country. 

Intervention of the Bourgeoisie of Paris (1410) ; the Cabo- 
chiens. — The bourgeoisie now came forward, as in 1356, and 
attempted to bring peace to the state. They persuaded 
King Charles, in one of his lucid intervals, to send all the 
princes away, each to his province, forbidding him to re- 
turn. But a few months afterwards, war was renewed. 
At the demand of the city, the defence of Paris was con- 
fided b}^ the king's council to the Count of St. Pol, a friend 
of the Duke of Burgundy, and he, distrusting the upper 
ranks of the bourgeoisie, attempted to curb them by means 
of the populace. He sought the support of the numerous 
and wealthy guild of the butchers, and authorized them to 
raise five hundred men for the defence of the city. They 
armed their servants, slaughterers, and skinners. The 
violent horde, accustomed to the shedding of blood, was 
headed by the slaughterer Caboche. Then Paris 'iresented 
a strange and alarming spectacle. The populace made their 
remonstrances known to the prince ; he must remove from 
him his evil advisers and the companions of his debauch- 
eries ; he must lead a more regular life, and have a care of 



220 CHARLES VI. 

his health and his soul. The butchers took it upon them- 
selves to watch over this reformation of manners. They 
had compassion on the dauphin, but broke out into violence 
against those who were corrupting him ; they dragged them 
away from his hotel, led them away to the Parliament to be 
judged, and, on the way, executed justice themselves upon 
those with whom they were most displeased. 

The Ordinance of the Cabochiens (1413) ; Reaction. — 
Meanwhile the abler members of the party, its doctors and 
legists, were preparing, for the suppression of abuses, the 
great ordinance of 1413, called the ordinance of the Cabo- 
chiens, the execution of which* would have been one of 
the best administrative reforms ever effected in old France. 
But though men were found to plan it, there were none to 
execute and maintain it. Its administration fell into the 
hands of men who, by their intolerable excesses, hastened 
a reaction which caused their own fall and the abandonment 
of the measures of reform. 

The populace attacked not only vice and immorality, but 
wealth ; they mingled pillage and murder with reform ; they 
finally disgusted even those who had at first employed them. 
The Armagnacs, summoned by all moderate men, stopped 
the excesses of the populace, but also repealed the reform- 
atory measures carried out by the bourgeoisie (September, 
1413). John the Fearless was driven out, and forced to 
promise that he would not return to Paris (1414). 

Battle of Agincourt (1415). — While Armagnacs and 
Burgundians were thus fighting each other. King Henry V. 
of England judged that the moment had arrived for inter- 
vening in the contest. Since the extensive pillagings of 
the preceding century, war with France had always been 
popular in England. When Henry proposed an expedition 
on a large scale, he readily obtained from Parliament six 
thousand men-at-arms and twenty-four thousand archers, 
with whom he landed near Harfleur in August, 1415. Har- 
fleur was forced to surrender. But Henry had lost before 
it fifteen thousand men, half his army. Too weak now to 
attempt anything of consequence, he resolved to march 
across country to Calais. 

The English set out from Harfleur on the 8th of October, 
1415. Unable to cross the Somme at Blanchetaque, they 
were obliged to ascend the river as far as Amiens. Near 
Nesle, a peasant showed them a ford, difficult and danger- 



CHARLES VI. 221 

ous, by which nevertheless they crossed in safety. The 
French now began to fear that their enemy woukl escape 
them. The princes took up their position near the village of 
Agincourt, which the English would necessarily pass, in a 
narrow plain, newly ploughed, and rendered soft by the rain, 
and in which it was impossible for their fifty thousand men, 
of whom forty thousand were horsemen, to manoeuvre. The 
constable D'Albret had arranged the army in three lines ; 
but all desired to be in the first. There were, indeed, 
several thousand archers to oppose to the English archers, 
and some cannon; but all the space was occupied by the 
knights, and so no use could be made of them. When the 
English archers sent forth their arrows, there was no reply 
on the part of the French army. The French men-at-arms 
were on ground so yielding, were so heavily weighted with 
armor, and so closely jDacked together, that few were able 
to make any attack upon the English ; and these few, driven 
back, threw their own line of battle into disorder, and were 
followed up by the English archers, who, armed with axes, 
swords, and clubs, slew men and horses. The French rear- 
guard fled without having struck a blow. 

The English left 1600 men upon the field of battle; 
the French, 10,000, among whom were seven princes, the 
constable, and 120 lords ; 1500 prisoners, among whom were 
the "^dukes of Orleans and of Bourbon, remained in the 
hands of the victors. With these numerous captives, Henry 
V. marched to Calais, and re-embarked for England; his 
army, reduced to 10,000 men, could not think of under- 
taking any further enterprise after this extraordinary 
victory. 

Massacre of the Armagnacs at Paris (1418). — On hearing 
the news of the battle, the Count of Armagnac took posses- 
sion of the capital, the king, the dauphin, and the entire 
government. But lack of money soon drove him to altera- 
tions of the coinage and forced loans. Paris murmured. 
John the Fearless fomented the general discontent. He 
carried off Queen Isabella from Tours, and had her declared 
regent of the kingdom. In her name he forbade the towns 
to pay the taxes imposed by Armagnac, and entered into 
negotiations with Henry V., who had now returned and 
captured Caen (1417). 

Meanwhile a plot was laid against Armagnac. A Bur- 
gundian leader was admitted into the city with a force of 



222 CHARLES ri. 

eight hundred men ; the former partisans of the faction, the 
butchers, the skinners, and all the men of the markets flocked 
to his standard. Some Armagnacs made their escape, tak- 
ing the dauphin with them ; the greater number, and the 
constable among others, were cast into prison. Their lives 
were soon in danger. On a Sunday in June, 1418, the 
poptilace, maddened by hunger and by rumors of Armagnac 
plots, broke out in riot and rushed to the prisons, to massa- 
cre without distinction all who were there. By Monday 
morning sixteen hundred persons had perished ; men were, 
slain in the prisons, they were slain in the streets; their 
corpses lay in the streets, "and children dragged them 
about in sport." These terrible scenes had just taken place, 
when Duke John the Fearless, with the queen, re-entered 
Paris, amid the enthusiastic acclamations of the multitude. 
But soon an epidemic b""oke out, which carried off fifty thou- 
sand persons in Paris and the environs. The populace 
again became furious, and, rushing to the prisons, mas- 
sacred all those remaining or newly incarcerated in them. 
Some days after, the duke sent this ferocious band out to 
besiege the Armagnacs established, as he assured them, at 
Montlhery : when they had sallied forth, he shut the gates 
of Paris behind them. 

Rouen captured by the English (1419). — Thus John the 
Fearless found himself again master of the capital and of 
the government, but burdened also with the overwhelming 
responsibilities of the position, — to restrain the populace, 
to resist the Armagnacs, to make head against the English. 
After having taken possession of much of IsTormaudy, the 
latter had now formed the siege of Rouen. The good town 
resisted bravely for seven months. But the government 
did nothing for its assistance, and finally Eouen surren- 
dered. On learning of its fall, all the towns and strong- 
holds of the province opened their gates. Henry showed 
himself placable, and gave good terms to all who would 
take oath of fidelity to him. 

The pride of the English was raised to its utmost height 
by the conquest of this large and rich province. To the 
proposals of peace which the Duke of Burgundy made 
him, Henry replied by imperious demands, — a daughter of 
Charles VI. in marriage, and with her Guienne, Normandy, 
Brittany, Maine, Anjou and Touraine. 



CHARLES ri. 223 

Murder of John the Fearless (1419) ; Treaty of Troyes 

(1420). — Repulsed in this direction, John the Fearless 
reverted to negotiations with the Armagnacs. But his 
suspicion and hatred of them again prevailing, he turned 
again to the English. Then the resolute men who sur- 
rounded the dauphin (afterward Charles VII.) determined 
to make an end, after their own manner, of a prince who 
might at any moment deliver up the kingdom to the foreign- 
ers. In September, 1419, the Duke of Burgundy, invited to 
.an interview with the dauphin upon the bridge of Mon- 
tereau, was slain by Tanneguy-Duchdtel and the servants 
of the prince. 

The Englishmen reaped the benefits of the crime. The 
murder at the bridge of Montereau gave the crown of France 
to a king of England. In May, 1420, the disgraceful treaty 
of Troyes was concluded between Henry V., the young 
Duke of Burgundy, and Queen Isabella of France, who dis- 
inherited her son in order to give a crown to her daughter 
Catherine, whom she bestowed on the English king. It was 
agreed that Henry should administer the kingdom during 
the lifetime of Charles VI., and should succeed him at his 
death, and that neither of the two kings nor Duke Philip 
of Burgundy should make peace with the dauphin Charles 
save by the consent of all three of the negotiators and of 
the three estates in each kingdom. 

Death of Henry V. and Charles VI. (1422). —But the long- 
continued and vigorous resistance which the English ex- 
perienced at Sens, at Montereau, at Melun, and at Meaux, 
the defeat and death of his brother, the Duke of Clarence, 
at Baug6 (1421), showed Henry V. that he was far from 
possessing the whole of France. He was sensible of the 
difiiculties of his situation ; and when it was announced 
to him that his young queen had given birth to a son, he 
foretold, already in mortal illness, the fate of conquests so 
laboriously obtained. Thou^Ci still a young man, Henry V. 
died on August 14, 1422. Seven weeks later, on October 
21st, Charles VI. died, mourned and regretted by his people. 

Council of Constance. — Important events in the history 
of the Church had occurred during his reign. Two national 
councils, the first that had been held during the Capetian 
period, had assembled at Paris, to take counsel concerning 
the best means of bringing to an end the schism. France 
demanded and obtained the convocation of a general coun- 



224 CHARLES VI. 

oil. It was in session from 1414 to 1418 at Constance, 
deposed Popes John XXIII. and Benedict XIII., and set 
Martin V. in tlieir places ; declared, to prevent any future 
schism, that general councils were of superior authority to 
the Pope ; and at the same time showed its abhorrence of 
heresy by condemning John Hus and Jerome of Prague, 
who were burned at the stake. 



CHARLES VIL, TO HLS RETURN TO PARIS. 221 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

CHARLES VII., TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 
(1433-1436.) 

Henry VI. and Charles VII. — After the funeral of 
Cliarles VI. at St. Denis, the French liing-at-arms pro- 
claimed "Henry, king of France." At the same time, at 
Mehun-sur-Y6vre in Berry, a few French knights proclaimed 
Charles the Seventh. The king proclaimed at St. Denis was 
a child ten months old, grandson, through his mother, of 
Charles VI. His uncles would necessarily administer the 
kingdom in his name, — the Duke of Bedford, France ; the 
Duke of Gloucester, England. The child had been recog- 
nized as sovereign of the kingdom of France by the Par- 
liament, by the University, by the first prince of the blood, 
Philip the G-ood, Duke of Burgundy, and by Queen Isabella. 
Paris, almost all the countries north of the Loire, and 
G-uienne, to the south of that river, obeyed him. The king 
proclaimed in Berry, sole surviving son of Charles VI., was 
a young man of nineteen, of engaging manners, but weak in 
body, pale in countenance, and deficient in courage. For 
the moment and for long years after he showed an eager 
interest in pleasures only, and a certain dulness in the 
presence of business and of dangers. His authority was rec- 
ognized only in the soiithern provinces, excepting Guienne. 

Two defeats, at Crevant and at Verneuil, began the reign 
of Charles VII. and completed the ruin of all his hopes in 
the North of France. He seemed indifferent to this, readily 
submitted to hearing himself derisively called the king of 
Bourges, and wandered about from, castle to castle with his 
little court. Despite his weakness, the king of Bourges had 
one great advantage : he was the French prince, while the 
other was the king of the foreigners. The longer one lived 
with the English, the more one suffered from the harshness 
of their rule, the more one felt the shame of the ignominious 
treason which had delivered up France to them. The mar- 
riage of Charles VIL with Marie of Anjou won over to 



226 CHARLES VII., TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 

his cause that powerful family, and through it, the powerful 
house of Lorraine, whose brave princes were always French 
at heart. The Count of Foix, governor of Languedoc, after 
having scrupulously inquired of the jurisconsults and con- 
sulted the probable course of events, declared that his 
conscience obliged him to recognize Charles VII. as law- 
ful king. The constable's sword, given to Count Arthur 
de Eichemont, gained over his brother the Duke of Brittany 
to the side of France, and placed at the service of the king 
that warlike province, the nursery of good soldiers and 
skilful captains. Castile lent ships, and five or six thousand 
soldiers arrived as auxiliaries from Scotland. So even in 
the hands of the indolent Charles VII. the royal power con- 
stituted itself anew and again attached to itself whatever 
was French in the country, and whatever was hostile to 
England abroad. By removing from his person, at the de- 
mand of Eichemont, Tanneguy-Duch^tel and those Armag- 
nacs who had compromised him in the affair of the bridge 
of Montereau, Charles prepared a later reconciliation with 
those whom the death of John the Fearless had sent into 
the English party. 

Difficulties of the English. — It was the alliance of the 
English with the Duke of Burgundy which had brought 
them Paris and the treaty of Troyes. Accordingly it was 
absolutely necessary to keep on good terms with him. 
Bedford readily perceived this necessity and acted accord- 
ingly. But Gloucester refused to observe it. He had just 
married Jacqueline of Hainault, and this union was sure to 
bring about a private war between Gloucester and the Duke 
of Burgundy. 

Meanwhile the towns resisted the sway of the foreigner. 
La Fert^-Bernard (dep. Sarthe) sustained, in 1422, a siege of 
four months, and only when reduced to the last extremity 
submitted to Salisbury. In 1427 the English, in order to 
approach the Loire, besieged Montargis on the Loing with 
three thousand men-at-arms. The town had but a small 
garrison, but the inhabitants assisted efficiently. They 
defended themselves for three months. At the end of that 
time they sent word to the king that they had no more pro- 
visions nor ammunition. Dunois and La Hire (the same 
whose prayer was " God, I pray thee to do to-day for La 
Hire what thou wouldst wish that La Hire should do for 
thee, if he were God and thou wert La Hire ") set out with 



CHARLES VII., TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 227 

sixteen hundred men and forced the English to raise the 
siege. 

Siege of Orleans (1428-1429) : Battle of the Herrings 

(1429). — Next year Bedford resolved to push military oper- 
ations with vigor. In June, the Earl of Salisbury landed at 
Calais with six thousand good English troops. Bedford 
added to them four thousand soldiers gathered from the 
garrisons of Normandy, and this army, after taking several 
strong places, appeared before Orleans. Orleans was the 
gate of Berry, of the Bourbonnais, and of Poitou. If it were 
taken, the king of Bourges became king only of Languedoc 
and Dauphiny. In October, 1428, the English appeared be- 
fore its walls and immediately began to raise around the 
place bastions, the guard of which was intrusted to the 
bravest captains in their army, — the Earl of Suffolk, Lord 
Talbot, William Gledsdale, and others. Salisbury was 
commander-in-chief. 

The people of Orleans, expecting this siege, had fortified 
their town, burning the suburbs with their own hands. The 
garrison numbered only five hundred men, but all old sol- 
diers. Moreover, the citizens were determined not to spare 
themselves. They formed thirty-four companies, and each 
undertook to defend one of the thirty-four towers of the 
wall. Artillery was beginning to play an important r6le in 
battles and sieges. That of the Isesiegers of Orleans was 
ill served, that of the city was managed with great skill. 
Salisbury was killed by a chance cannon-shot, and the next 
day the bastard of Orleans, the handsome and brave Dunois, 
entered the place with the best knights of the time and six 
or seven hundred soldiers : others followed, until gradually 
there came to be seven thousand in Orleans. 

But the enemy, with British tenacity, continued strength- 
ening their circumvallations : they proposed to reduce the 
town by famine. Four months had already passed, and pro- 
visions began to be scarce in the town. It was known that 
the Duke of Bedford was sending from Paris, under command 
of Sir John Eastolf, twenty-five hundred soldiers, and three 
hundred wagons of ammunition and provisions, especially of 
herrings for the Lenten fast. The Count of Clermont, eldest 
son of the Duke of Bourbon, assembled a body of five thou- 
sand men, including the flower of the nobility, and met the 
English convoy near Eouvray (February, 1429). On the 
approach of the French, Fastolf made a stockade of his 



228 CHARLES VIL, TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 

wagons. The Frencli opened the attack with their artillery, 
and all was going prosperously ; but, as so often before, the 
impetuosity of the knights lost them the battle (battle of the 
Herrings). Meanwhile the situation of the town became 
daily more serious, and Charles VII. did not arouse from 
his indolence. Some of the nobility disgracefully abandoned 
the city. The besieged began to despair. They attempted 
negotiations, but with no success. 

Revival of National Feeling. — What the great nobles did 
not do, the lesser people did. The humiliation of France 
and of its sovereign began to weigh upon the hearts of the 
people. In presence of the foreigner the sentiment of 
nationality awoke in them. Hitherto a man was a citizen 
of his town, and nothing more. In the face of the 
English he felt himself a Frenchman. A century before, 
no one had disturbed himself abou.t Calais, when besieged 
by Edward III. All France now interested itself in the 
fate of Orleans. A sentiment unknown to the Middle Ages, 
that of patriotism, was coming into existence. The terrible 
miseries through which the nation was passing, instead of 
destroying this sentiment, had made it more active. , These 
miseries arose from various causes, but the people recognized 
only one, — the English. All the sufferings which they had 
endured they attributed to the English. All the resentments 
which they had accummulated were directed against the 
English. To drive out the English became their familiar 
thought, and since men gave no aid, they reckoned upon the 
aid of God. The opinion gradually became established 
from one end of France to the other, that the kingdom was 
to be saved by a virgin, a daughter of the people: this 
daughter of the people was Jeanne d'Arc. 

Jeanne d'Arc (1429-1431). — Jeanne d'Arc, third daughter 
of the peasant Jacques d'Arc, was born in 1409 in the vil- 
lage of Domr^my, on the borders of Champagne and Lorraine. 
Life upon this frontier was frequently disturbed. "War was 
perpetual there — now the English, now the Burgundians, 
now the grandes compagnies : it was necessary to be ready 
at any moment to fight, to flee into the neighboring forest 
if too weak to fight, and to return when the enemy had 
disappeared, to repair his ravages. The men of Domr^my, 
determined Armagnacs, had, two leagues from their village, 
the Burgundian village of Marey ; men, children even, of 
the two villages never met without fighting. 



J 



CHARLES VII., TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 229 

War, combats, wounds, devastation, were the first sight 
that struck the eyes of Jeanne. By the hearth-fire she 
heard stories of war, and then holy traditions, pious legends 
of St.- Michael the archangel of battles, St. Margaret and St. 
Catherine, for whom the young peasant girl devoutly wove 
wreaths and garlands, whom she was wont to regard as her 
especial saints, and of whom she was wont to dream in the 
neighboring oak forest. In all these day-dreams was mingled 
the image of Charles VII., the poor young king, denied by 
his mother, and driven out of his inheritance by the English. 

Jeanne grew up in the midst of all these excitements, with 
firm, good health, a good girl, simple, amiable, and timid, so 
her companions say, delighting in the church and in holy 
places, confessing often, and increasing by bodily austerities 
her imaginative exaltation of soul. One day in 1423, at 
noonday, the young girl, being in the garden near the church, 
suddenly saw a great light, and from the midst of that light 
came forth a voice, bidding her be a good child and go often 
to church. Another time she saw in this light beautiful 
figures, of whom one, which had wings, said to her, "Jeanne, 
go and deliver the king of France and restore to him his 
kingdom." She trembled greatly, and replied, " My lord, I 
am only a poor girl ; I should not know how to lead men-at- 
arms." The voice replied, " St. Catherine and St. Margaret 
will aid you." She saw again the archangel and the two 
saints, heard her voices, as she called them : she heard them 
at times during four years, and felt forced to obey them. 

But how should she obey them? Her father declared 
that sooner than see her go off with soldiers, he wovild droAvn 
her with his own hands. At Vaucouleurs, her uncle, believ- 
ing in her mission, took her to the Sieur de Baudricourt, 
captain of the garrison. Rudely rebuffed by him, Jeanne 
did not waver, " for," said she, " before mid-Lent I must be 
with the king, even though to get there I must wear off my 
legs to the knees." At last she succeeded. The people 
made up a purse to equip her and to buy her a horse. She 
cut off her long hair, put on male garments, and set out from 
Vaucouleurs, under escort of six men-at-arms, in February, 
1429. ^ J» 

It was a terrible journey at such a time. Jeanne was in 
danger both from the coarse protectors who had been given 
her, from robbers, and from the enemy. But nothing fright- 
ened her. The enthusiasm which she felt and which she 



230 CHARLES VII., TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 

inspired triumphed over all difficulties and all dangers, and 
at length she arrived at Chinon, where Charles VII. was. 
The council discussed for two days whether the king ought 
to see her; but at length it was resolved on. In nowise 
disconcerted by her ceremonious reception, she recognized 
the king at once among all the courtiers, went straight to 
him, and said, " Gentle dauphin, why do you not believe in 
me ? I tell you that God has pity on you, upon your king- 
dom, and upon your people : for St. Louis and St. Charle- 
magne are on their knees before him, making prayer for us. 
If you will give me men, I will raise the siege of Orleans, 
and I will conduct you to Eheims to be consecrated, for it 
is the pleasure of God that his enemies the English shall go 
back to their country, and that the kingdom shall remain to 
you." 

The cynical court of Charles VII. was not easily to be con- 
vinced of a miraculous mission. But the people were already 
convinced. Public opinion urged on the hesitating govern- 
ment. Jeanne was equipped, armed, and sent to Orleans. 

Deliverance of Orleans (May, 1429). — Orleans was in 
very great danger ; but it must also be said that the Eng- 
lish besiegers were not in a much better situation. Losses 
and desertion had reduced their army to four or five thou- 
sand men, and these somewhat dispersed. To reduce ene- 
mies so weak, only discipline and union on the part of 
those who attacked them were necessary. Now nothing 
was more disorderly than these partisan bands and captains 
who had thrown themselves into the town to defend it, and 
who in war sought only the gains and the pleasures which 
might be obtained from it. To give morale and discipline to 
these rude and savage natures was an undertaking far be- 
yond the scope of the royal authority at this time. But 
what royalty could not have done, the general enthusiasm- 
effected. At a sign from Jeanne d'Arc, they renounced 
their debaucheries, confessed, and took communion. Thus 
metamorphosed, the army became invincible. 

At the end of April, 1429, Jeanne d'Arc entered Orleans 
with a convoy of provisions and a small escort : a few days 
later she led in the army, passing and repassing before the 
lines of the enemy, while the English refused to stir, partly 
because they believed that all the powers of hell were now 
conspiring against them. Jeanne, who was a saint within 
the walls of Orleans, was in the English bastions a sorceress. 



CHARLES VII., TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 231 

The Englisli assailed her with coarse insults, yet had an 
extreme fear of her. These redoubtable soldiers evacuated 
of their own accord their bastions on the south of the Loire, 
except two, on which they concentrated all their strength. 
On the sixth of May Jeanne crossed the Loire, advanced 
against one of these bastions, rallied her troops from the 
panic which had at first caused them to flee, planted her 
standard, embroidered with fleurs-de-lis, upon the bank of 
the ditch, and the bastion was taken and razed to the 
ground. N"ext day all the army and the people attacked 
the other bastion. Jeanne with her own hands placed a 
ladder against its wall, mounted it, and received a serious 
wound, which only raised the enthusiasm of her soldiers. 
The English, attacked on all sides, vainly attempted to flee ; 
five hundred of them were put to the sword. Not a single 
Englishman now remained on the south of the Loire. The 
next day Suffolk and Talbot evacuated the northern bas- 
tions, abandoning munitions, artillery, baggage, prisoners, 
and the sick. Jeanne then set out for Tours, where, kneel- 
ing before the king, she besought him to go and be crowned 
at Rheims. 

Charles VII. crowned at Rheims (1429). — To be conse- 
crated at Rheims was for Charles VII. to gain a signal ad- 
vantage over his young rival Henry VI., and to become in 
reality king of France. But the politicians again believed 
themselves the wisest, and it was decided first to clear the 
banks of the Loire of Englishmen. But after a decisive 
victory won near Patay, the advice of Jeanne could no 
longer be resisted. The people believed in her only, and 
even the nobles took her side. The army set out from Gien 
at the end of June, 1429. It was received with joy by the 
peasants and in the villages ; but the large towns hesitated. 
Auxerre did not open its gates, but furnished provisions. 
Troyes, which had a strong garrison of Burgundians and 
English, and walls in good repair, refused to receive the 
royal army. Jeanne ran to the ramparts with her standard 
in her hand, caused the ditch to be filled up, and began 
attacking the wall, when the English, disturbed by the news 
of what had happened at Orleans, offered of their own accord 
to go away. Charles did not stop at Troyes, nor at Chalons, 
which willingly opened its gates, and on the 13th of July 
arrived before Rheims. Two Burgundian lords commanded 
the town, but had no soldiers. They could not induce the 



232 CHARLES riL, TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 

citizens to fight : the city was surrendered, and on the 17th 
Charles was finally consecrated with the usual ceremonies. 

Continuation of the War against the English. — Jeanne 
had done the two great things which her voices had bade 
her do ; she had delivered Orleans and caused the king to be 
crowned ; she would have wished now to return to her vil- 
lage. As they entered Rheims, she said to Dunois, " I have 
accomplished that which my Lord commanded me ; I would 
now that he would let me go back to my father and mother 
and tend their sheep and cattle." But her work was not 
yet finished, for the English still held a considerable part of 
the kingdom. Jeanne demanded that the army should 
march upon Paris, but the king's counsellors decided first 
to take the small towns lying on the way to Paris. This was 
easily done ; but when they arrived before Paris the oppor- 
tunity had passed. Paris was too large a city to be carried 
by a sudden stroke, and the Parisians were too largely com- 
promised in recent revolutions to submit to Charles VII. 
save under absolute necessity. Time had been given them 
to p)repare themselves. They made a courageous defence. 
Jeanne bore herself with her usual intrepidity, crossed the 
ditch of the city alone, was wounded, and yet received all 
the blame of the failure. She saw Charles VII., returning 
to his listlessness, go back to Chinon, leaving orders to 
evacuate St. Denis. She saw the Duke of Burgundy, taking 
courage, re-enter Soissons and besiege Compi^gne. Touched 
with the fate of these poor citizens, who had given them- 
selves up to Charles VII., she threw herself into the town 
in order to defend it. 

Captivity and Death of Jeanne d'Arc (1430-1431). — The 
very day of her arrival, in May, 1430, she made a sortie ; but 
the besiegers repulsed it, and when she came back to the 
gate she found it closed. Abandoned in the midst of the 
enemy, she was captured by the bastard of Vend6me, who 
sold her to John of Luxemburg. John of Luxemburg sold 
her to the Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke of Burgundy 
to the English at Rouen. 

To the French, Jeanne was a messenger of God ; to the 
English, an emissary of the devil. Pierre Cauchon, bishop 
of Beauvais, undertook to prove it by a witchcraft trial in 
due form. He drew up an accusation on the four following 
points : transgression of the laws of the Church, in having 
employed practices of magic, in having taken arms contrary 



CHARLES VII., TO HIS RETURN- TO PARIS. 233 

to the desire of her parents, in having assumed the attire 
of the opposite sex, and in liaving asserted reveLations Avliich 
the ecclesiastical authority had not sanctioned. Thus a j^oor 
girl of nineteen found herself alone, without help, in the face 
of judges sold to her enemies, who arbitrarily suppressed 
all the proofs of her innocence, who prevented her appeal- 
ing to Pope or council, who tried to embarrass her by absurd, 
captious, or subtle questions, yet found themselves often 
disconcerted by her straightforward replies. 

" Jeanne," said thej^, " do you believe that you are in a 
state of grace ? " " If I am not, may God put me in it ; if 
I am, may Grod maintain me in it." " Do you believe that 
you did right to set out without the permission of your 
father and mother ? ought not one to honor his father and 
his mother ? " " They have pardoned me." " Do you think, 
then, that you did not sin in doing so ? " " God commanded 
it ; if I had a hundred fathers and mothers, I would never- 
theless have set out.". "Do you believe that your king did 
right to kill, or cause to be killed, my lord of Burgundy ? " 
" It was a great injury to the kingdom of France ; but how- 
ever it may have been between them, God sent me to the 
aid of the king of France." " Do St. Catherine and St. Mar- 
garet hate the English ? " " They love what our Lord loves 
and hate what he hates." " Does God hate the English ? " 
" Of the love or hate which God has for the English I know 
nothing ; but I know well that they shall be driven put of 
France, save those who shall perish therein." 

Her condemnation was resolved upon in advance. Under 
threats and promises, especially that of being withdrawn 
from the hands of her English jailers and restored to the 
custody of the Church, she yielded, and signed a recanta- 
tion jDresented to her, without at all knowing what was con- 
tained in it : then, as an act of grace and moderation, she 
was condemned simply to pass the rest of her days in prison, 
upon bread and water. 

At this the English began to complain. Their affairs 
were going from bad to worse, and they were so much the 
more enraged against their captive. In fact, they seized her 
again. On the morning of Trinity Sunday (May 31, 1431) 
one of the Englislimen who guarded her took away her 
woman's clothes and left her only her male attire. " You 
knoAv," said she, " that I am forbidden to wear it." They 
would not give her any other, and she was forced to put 



234 CHARLES riL, TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 

it on. The judges, at once informed, were all ready to de- 
clare her crime. They condemned her to be burned alive, as 
relapsed. The execution was to take place immediately. 
At first, Jeanne wept bitterly ; yet still expected that some 
deliverance would come. But at nine o'clock, clothed again 
in woman's garments, she was placed in a cart, and rode 
through the trembling crowd, guarded by eight hundred 
Englishmen armed with lances and swords. 

"The end of the sad journey was the Old Market or Fish 
Market. Three scaffolds had been raised there. Upon one 
was the episcopal and royal throne of the cardinal of Eng- 
land (Beaufort) among the seats of his prelates ; upon the 
other were to appear the preacher, the judges and the 
bailli; on the third, the condemned. Near them was a 
great platform of plaster, heaped high with wood. It was 
desired that, placed upon the top of this mountain of wood, 
and rising above the circle of lances and swords, she might 
be seen from all parts of the square. The terrible ceremony 
began with a sermon; then the ecclesiastical judge, the 
bishop of Beauvais, benignly exhorted her to think of her 
soul, and to recall all her sins, in order to move herself to 
repentance. But already she had fallen upon her knees, 
invoking God, the Virgin, St. Michael, and St. Catherine, 
pardoning all and asking pardon, begging those around to 
pray for her. She especially requested the priests to say 
each one a mass for her soul. All this was done in a man- 
ner so devout, so humble, and so touching, that no one could 
control his emotion. The bishop of Beauvais began to 
weep, the bishop of Boulogne sobbed, and even the English 
wept also, Winchester among the rest. 

" But the judges, though disconcerted for a moment, re- 
gained their composure. The bishop of Beauvais, wiping 
his eyes, began to read her condemnation : he reminded the 
condemned of all her crimes, schism, idolatry, the invoca- 
tion of devils, how she had been admitted to penitence, and 
how, ' seduced by the Prince of Lies, she had fallen back, 
grief! as the dog returns to his vomit. . . . Therefore 
we pronounce that you are a rotten member, and as such, 
cut off from the Church. We deliver you over to the 
secular power, praying it, nevertheless, to be merciful.' 

" Thus abandoned by the Church, she turned in all con- 
fidence to God. She asked for a cross. An Englishman 
handed her a cross of wood, which he made from the pieces 



CHARLES riL, TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 235 

of a stick. She received it none the less devoutly, kissed 
the rude cross, and placed it upon her breast, beneath her 
garments. But she wished for the cross of the Church, 
that it might be held before her eyes until her death. The 
good bailiff Massieu and Brother Isambart caused one to be 
brought for her from the parish church of St. Sauveur. As 
she was embracing this cross, and Isambart was encouraging 
her, the English began to find this tedious ; it was already 
noon ; the soldiers grumbled ; the captains said, ' How now, 
priests, must we dine here ? ' Then losing patience, they 
sent forward two sergeants to take her from the hands of 
the priests. At the very foot of the tribunal she was seized 
by the soldiers, who dragged her to the executioner, saying, 
'Do thine office.' This brutality of the soldiers excited 
general horror. A number of those present, and even of -the 
judges, lied in order to see no more. 

"Even in this moment of terror and of trouble she 
accused neither her king nor her saints. But arrived at 
the top of the pyre, seeing the great town and the motion- 
less and silent crowd, she could not help exclaiming, ' Ah, 
Eouen, Rouen, I have great fear that thou shalt suffer for 
my death.' She was bound to the stake, crowned with a 
mitre bearing the inscription, 'Heretic, relapsed, apostate, 
idolater.' Then the executioner lighted the fire. She saw 
it from above and uttered a cry. Then, as the friar who 
was exhorting her paid no heed to the flames, she feared 
for him, forgetting herself, and bade him descend from the 
pile. To the bishop she said, gently, as she had said before, 
' Bishop, I die by your means ; if you had put me in the 
prisons of the Church, this would not have happened.' It 
had been expected that, seeing herself abandoned by her 
king, she would at length have acciised him and spoken 
against him. But she still defended him : ' Whether I have 
done well or done ill, my king had no share in it ; it is not 
he who advised me.' 

"Meanwhile the flame was mounting high. At the 
moment when it touched her, the unhappy girl shuddered 
and asked for holy water : Water ! it was apparently a 
a cry of fear. But, recovering at once, thenceforward she 
spoke only the name of God, his angels and his saints. 
She bore witness to them : ' Yes, my voices were from God ; 
my voices did not deceive me.' These weighty words are 
attested by the Dominican who mounted the pile of fagots 



236 CHARLES YIL, TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 

with her, whom she persuaded to descend, but who, from 
below, spoke to her and listened, holding before her eyes 
the cross ; and also by another witness, a saintly man whose 
name history ought to preserve, the Augustine friar, Isam- 
bart de la Pierre. ' We heard her,' say they, ' in the fire, 
calling upon her saints and her archangel : she repeated the 
name of the Saviour. Finally dropping her head upon her 
breast, she uttered one loud cry : Jesus ! ' 

" Ten thousand men were weeping. Some Englishmen 
alone laughed or tried to laugh. One of the most vehement 
had sworn to put a fagot upon the pile : she died at the 
moment when he placed it there. He fell ill ; his comrades 
led him to a tavern to make him drink and recover his 
spirits : but he could not rally. ' I saw,' he said, in his 
delirium, ' I saw a dove fly forth from her lips with her last 
breath.' Others had read in the flames the word which she 
had repeated : ' Jesus ! ' The executioner came in the evening 
to find Brother Isambart. He was filled with terror ; he con- 
fessed, but he could not believe that God would ever pardon 
him. A secretary of the king of England said aloud as he 
went away : ' We are lost ; we have burned a saint ! ' " 
(Michelet). 

Defeat of the English ; Consecration of the English King 
at Paris (1431). — The sorceress was burned, and nothing 
prevented the English from soon conquering the kingdom 
of Erance ; but first they judged it wise to put the law on 
their side by causing the young Henry VI. to be consecra- 
ted, the consecration of Charles VII. having been declared 
null and void. The ceremony took place in December, 1431, 
at Paris. An English prelate, the cardinal of Winchester, 
officiated, to the great discontent of the bishop of Paris : 
the attendants were English lords, and not a single Erench 
prince : there was no liberation of prisoners, no reduction of 
taxes, no largess to the people. "A citizen marrying his 
children would do things better," said the townspeople. 
General discontent was the result of this ceremony intended 
to render Henry VI. popular. It remained to be seen, 
whether the English would at least recover their old good 
fortune in war. First they failed to take Compi^gne. 
Eouen was nearly captured by the French (1432). Dunois 
obtained Chartres by an intrigue with the French within 
the town. The English could not even take a fortified 
village. 



CHARLES VII., TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 237 

Rupture of the Alliance between England and Burgundy. 

— The English, unfortunate everywhere, had so much the 
more need of the alliance with the Duke of Burgundy. But 
suspicions arose between the duke and the English princes. 
Bedford's wife, sister of the Duke Philip, died in ISTovember, 
1432. Every mistake committed by the English was imme- 
diately and very shrewdly turned to account by the Breton 
who then directed all affairs at the court of France, the 
constable de Richemont, whose skilful policy consisted in 
bringing the king of France and the Duke of Burgundy 
nearer together. But though Philip the G-ood had no lack 
of grievances, yet, in a sort of chivalrous fidelity toward 
his allies, he would not engage in any negotiations save 
general negotiations for the re-establishment of peace ; and 
a veritable European congress was assembled at Arras in 
the year 1435. 

Treaty of Arras (1435). Representatives of all the Chris- 
tian states assembled there : deputies of the good towns of 
the kingdom, deputies of the University ; the constable de 
Richemont, with eighteen great lords, in behalf of the king 
of France ; the cardinal of Winchester, with several lords, 
in behalf of England ; and finally the Duke of Burgundy. 

The conference opened upon the 5th of August, 1435. 
The English at first demanded the execution of the treaty 
of Troyes pure and simple, next that each should retain 
what he possessed ; and when only Aquitaine and Normandy 
in full sovereignty were offered to them, they left Arras on 
the 6th of September. Then every one begged the Duke 
of Burgundy to restore peace to France. He had many 
scruples. In the first place he had sworn to avenge the 
death of his father — the cardinal-legates who presided 
over the assembly offered to release him immediately from 
this evil oath. Secondly, he had signed the treaty of 
Troyes — the jurisconsults assured him that that treaty 
was absolutely null, since the Roman law forbids the making 
of agreements concerning the inheritance of a living person. 
At this point Bedford died. The duke now considered him- 
self free from every engagement, and signed the treaty of 
Arras. It was agreed that the king should give assurances, 
or cause assurances to be given, to the Duke of Burgundy, 
that the killing of Duke John was an ill deed and always 
deplored by him; but that he was then very young, and 
knew not how to deal with the affair ; that for the soul of 



238 CHARLES riL, TO HIS RETURN TO PARIS. 

Duke Jolin certain endowments sliould be made and certain 
buildings erected by the king. Then came more tangible 
satisfactions to the Duke of Burgundy, — the cession in per- 
petuity of the counties of Auxerre and Mdcon and three 
chdtellenies; cession, with permission to ransom, of the 
towns of the Somme, St. Quentin, Amiens, Abbeville, and 
others ; cession of the feudal revenues of the county of 
Artois ; and exemption of the duke during his lifetime and 
that of the king from every sort of dependence upon the 
latter. 

Charles VII. at Paris (1436). — These humiliating con- 
cessions had an immediate compensation : the treaty of 
Arras gave the king of France Paris. The citizens invited 
the constable de Eichemont, and in May, 1436, opened their 
gates to him. The English garrison of fifteen hundred men 
shut themselves up in the Bastile. Eichemont was totally 
unprepared to undertake a siege. The English offered to 
surrender the Bastile on condition of being allowed to 
withdraw with their baggage and those persons who should 
desire to accompany themj and this form of capitulation 
was accepted. 



EIGHTH PERIOD. 

Fl>^AL YlCTORT OF THE CrOWN OVER THE FEU- 
DAL Aristocracy (1436-1491). 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE ENGLISH EXPELLED FROM FRANCE. — GOVERNMENT 
OF CHARLES VII. 

(1436-1461 A.D.) 

Situation of the Kingdom. — Some time after the surren- 
der of Paris, Charles VII. paid a visit to his capital. The 
pestilence still prevailed in the city. The streets were so 
deserted that wolves came into the town: forty persons 
were devoured by them in a single week of September, 
1438. 

The people, accustomed to arms and to the management 
of affairs, were henceforth to count for much more than 
hitherto. Above the citizen class were the remnants of old 
feudalism, singularly altered by a century of civil and for- 
eign war. In such wars the government furnished neither 
pay, nor provisions, nor ammunition : the men-at-arms were 
forced to live by the profits of war, at the expense of the 
enemy if they could, most often at the expense of the 
country, and were quite without restraint or discipline. The 
chieft?ans were the most cruel and ferocious of men, harsh 
toward the enemy, but equally harsh toward the peasants 
or citizens, despoiling the one as well as the other. Wars 
thus conducted corrupted an entire class of men, those "v^ho 
were called gentlemen and wore the sword. The manners 
of camps made their way into the castles. Murders and 
bloody deeds were common among the nobility. The in- 



240 THE ENGLISH EXPELLED FROM FRANCE. 

famous Gilles de Eetz continued for forty years to kidnap 
children in the fields and in the towns, in order to kill them 
at his leisure and conduct magical operations. Above this 
feudal aristocracy was the aristocracy of the princes, which 
the crown had created with its own hands, by bestowing 
vast appanages upon the sons, brothers, and relatives of the 
king. Such was the origin of the powerful houses of Bur- 
gundy, Orleans, Anjou, and Bourbon, who joined to the 
independent spirit of the antique feudalism the pride and 
ambitious claims of royal blood. 

In the midst of a French society thus composed, the king 
of Bourges, who had become king of Paris without much 
improvement in his situation, now found himself. But 
just as in the twelfth century Louis VI. was aided by the 
soldiers of the communes, so in the fifteenth century the 
people in their misery, the king in his weakness, drew 
nearer to each other and aided each other in maintaining 
ideas of order and of justice, and in common efforts to 
strike down that aristocratic supremacy which stood in the 
way of the unification and X)rosperity of the kingdom. The 
king thus again became the great revolutionary of his time. 

Charles VII., in fact, in the latter part of his reign, showed 
himself a quite different man, always very careless in mat- 
ters of morality but, so far as public affairs were concerned, 
matured by age and experience. The change was not due, 
as legend relates, to the influence of his mistress, Agnes 
Sorel, but to that of the wise counsellors in whom he en- 
tirely trusted : Jean Bureau, the master of the artillery ; 
Jacques Coeur, the treasurer ; Etienne Chevalier, the king's 
secretary ; Guillaume Cousinot, the master of requests ; and 
others. All these were commoners ; Agnes, also, was only 
the daughter of a simple squire. If we find some noble 
names among the counsellors of Charles VII., they belong 
to that lesser nobility, which was nothing without the king's 
support. Richemont and Dunois are the only exceptions, 
but the constable was less the minister of the king than 
that of France. He made war as vigorously upon the 
favorites of Charles VII. as upon the English. 

Ordinance of Orleans (1439). — Measures of reform ap- 
peared so virgent, that the government did not even wait 
for the end of the war before undertaking them. In Octo- 
ber, 1439, Charles convoked, at Orleans, the States-General 
of the northern provinces, and by their advice issued an 



GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES VII. 241 

ordinance, reserving to himself the right of appointing all 
the captains of France, and fixing the number of the soldiers. 
He forbade any one to assume the name of captain or to 
command soldiers if he had not been nominated to the ojQGLce. 
The captain remained responsible for the conduct of his 
men : he was under severe penalties to prevent them from 
pillaging or maltreating churchmen, merchants, or laborers. 
The soldiers were to be amenable to the jurisdiction of 
the baillis and the provosts. Finally, each captain was to 
be sent to garrison a designated frontier fortress, and was 
forbidden to leave it without orders. Barons who had men- 
at-arms in their castles were to maintain them at their own 
expense, and to be responsible for any excesses which they 
might commit. 

This ordinance of 1439 was a complete revolution, for it 
put the military forces of the kingdom in the king's hands. 
Many intrigues forthwith resulted. The lords and tKe 
Skinners (marauders) declared that this was the overthrow 
of all order, that such a king ought at once to be replaced 
by the dauphin Louis, his son, a young man of seventeen, 
who showed, they said, precocious talents. They little sus- 
pected what talents he was eventually to disclose. 

The Praguerie (1440). — Impatient to reign, the dauphin 
lent himself readily to these schemes. The dukes of Bour- 
bon and Alen9on, the counts of VendOme and Dunois, the 
principal chiefs of the Skinners, put themselves at the head 
of the rebellion. It was an insurrection of the whole no-, 
bility against the crown. Charles VII. was at Poitiers. 
Throughout Poitou the citizens declared for the king, and 
the strongholds fell one after another into his hands. This 
caused reflection among the rebels; and the wisest, like 
Dunois, hastened to make a separate peace, and to put 
themselves at the king's service against their recent asso- 
ciates. In the Bourbonnais and in Auvergne, as in Poitou, 
the bourgeoisie was for the king and against the lords. The 
states of Auvergne declared that they were body and goods 
on the side of the king, who protected the poor people 
against the vexations of the soldiers ; and they furnished 
him with money. The dukes of Bourbon and Alen§on and 
the dauphin saw plainly that they must not only submit, 
but sue for pardon. They appeared before the king, fell on 
their knees at his feet, and begged to be pardoned. 

This prompt submission of the insurgents, this concert 



242 THE ENGLISH EXPELLED FROM FRANCE. 

of the bourgeoisie and the crown, were a warning to the 
entire aristocracy. The Duke of Burgundy, though he had 
refused to give aid to the insurgents, considered himself 
warned like the rest. He felt it necessary to strengthen 
himself against an authority so threatening, to acquire 
allies. He therefore arranged for the deliverance, and in 
part paid the ransom, of Duke Charles of Orleans, a prisoner 
of the English since Agincourt, and the most graceful poet 
of the fifteenth century, gave him his niece in marriage, 
conferred upon him the order of the Golden Fleece, and 
sent the collar of the same order to the dukes of Brittany 
and Alen9on, 

Meanwhile the king continued to make the royal justice 
felt. He took and delivered over to the provost the boldest 
of the Skinners, the bastard of Bourbon, who, in spite of his 
birth, was sewn up in a sack, and thrown into the river. 
He forced the Count of St. Pol to submit his quarrels to 
the Parliament of Paris. And all this without relaxing 
for a moment the war against the English ; wresting from 
them Meaux, Pontoise, and Dieppe; seducing their allies in 
the south of France, compelling them finally to ask for a 
truce (1444) and the hand of a French princess, Margaret 
of Anjou, for their young king, Henry VI. ; and raising up 
at their gates a new enemy by the marriage of the dauphin 
Louis with Margaret of Scotland, daughter of James I. 

The Skinners in Switzerland; Charles VII. in Lorraine 
(1444). — Charles had granted this truce to the English 
only in order to finish the work of internal reform begun 
in 1439. He resolved to rid himself of the companies of 
Skinners by sending them off to perish in foreign lands. 
Two requ.ests for assistance arrived at the same time, — one 
from the Emperor Frederick III. for aid against the Swiss, 
the other from Duke Rene of Lorraine for aid against Metz. 
Charles acceded to both. 

Switzerland had founded and assured its independence 
over against Austria and the Empire by three battles, — 
Morgarten, Sempach, and Nafels, in which a handful of 
peasants had heroically defeated large feudal armies. In- 
vited by Frederick III. to give assistance against them, 
Charles hastened to send forth, in as orderly a fashion as 
possible, that army with which he did not know what to do, 
fourteen thousand Frenchmen, eight thousand Englishmen, 
Scotchmen, Brabanters, Spaniards, and Italians, and with 



GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES VII. 243 

them, as generalissimo, the dauphin Louis. The terrible 
bands reached the Jura, and entered Switzerland. The 
Swiss, who were then besieging Zurich, sent only two thou- 
sand of their troops to reconnoitre the enemy. These, rashly 
ignoring the strength of the opposing force, threw them- 
selves upon them, and were slain to a man (1444). The 
dauphin conceived so high an esteem for men who fought 
so well that he advanced no further, and made a treaty of 
alliance with the Swiss. 

The king himself took the lead of the second expedition. 
Many of the nobility flocked to his side, and already there 
was talk of reviving the ancient rights of the crown of 
France over the countries beyond the Rhine ; but the expe- 
dition did not succeed, the inhabitants of Metz making a 
heroic resistance. Yet the king received the homage of 
Spinal, and had shown the standard of France in the valley 
of the Moselle. 

Creation of a Permanent Army (1445-1448). — These two 
expeditions had rid the king of the most insubordinate of 
the military adventurers, and had accustomed the others to 
some beginning of discipline. At length it was XDOssible 
to carry out the ordinance of Orleans. In 1445 the army 
was reduced to fifteen companies of a hundred lances each. 
For each lance were reckoned six men, the man-at-arms and 
his page, three archers, and a soldier armed with a dagger, 
all on horseback. They were distributed in small bodies, 
as garrisons of the towns. All other soldiers were ordered 
to disperse to their homes within fifteen days under penalty 
of being delivered over to justice as vagrants. They obeyed. 
Those enrolled submitted to rigid discipline. Charles VII. 
then had at his disposal a well-trained body of nine thousand 
horsemen. 

By another ordinance, in 1448, the king gave France what 
it had never had before, — a regular and permanent infantry. 
Each of the sixteen thousand parishes of the kingdom was 
obliged to furnish the king with a foot-soldier ; he was to be 
armed and equipped at their expense with light defensive 
armor, a casque, a dagger, a sword, a bow and quiver, or 
cross-bow. He was, moreover, to drill on every feast day and 
to be ready to serve the king whenever he was summoned. 
The franc archer was not at first a model soldier, for mili- 
tary qualities do not come into immediate existence in a 
nation so long' disarmed ; but the initial steps had been taken 
toward the formation of an excellent national infantry. 



244 THE ENGLISH EXPELLED FROM FRANCE. 

Financial Reforms (1443). — A still more important re- 
form in financial administration was effected by Jacques 
Coeur in 1443. To establish a system of mutual checks 
among financial officers, to compel the individual receivers 
to account to the receiver-general, and him to the Chamber 
of Accounts, to force the great officers of the king, the 
treasurer, the equerry, the war treasurer, and the master of 
the artillery, to account every month to the king himself, 
would doubtless be to-day regarded as elementary principles 
in finance : at that time these were excellent and admirable 
measures of reform. It was these financial reforms which 
enabled Charles VII. to create in France a military force 
dependent on the king alone. Since the time of Charles V. 
the ordinary indirect taxes had been permanent ; from the 
time of Charles VII. on, the land tax for the pay of the 
soldiers became perpetual, that is, continued to be levied 
Avithout being voted by the States-General. But at the 
same time the king guaranteed good administration of jus- 
tice in financial matters, by declaring the Cour des Aides, 
which judged financial cases in the last resort, to be a sov- 
ereign court. 

Creation of the Parliaments of Toulouse (1443) and Greno- 
ble (1453) ; Legal Reforms. — After an expedition in Gascony 
and Languedoc in 1442, the king established a Parliament 
at Toulouse for Languedoc and Guienne (1443). This 
was the first dismemberment of the Parliament of Paris. 
Suitors in the South gained by not having to go so far for 
justice, and tlie new Parliament kept constant watch in the 
king's behalf over these remote and turbulent provinces. 
The daupliin erected in his appanage, in 1453, the Par- 
liament of Grenoble. 

If in the fifteenth century there could be no thought of 
subjecting all Prenchmen to a uniform law, it was at least 
possible to make partial escape from the chaos of the 
coiitKmes and the arbitrary character of customary juris- 
prudence. Charles VII. designed and began the work of 
preparing an authoritative written text of each of these 
coiitumes. 

Pragmatic Sanction (1438) ; End of the Schism (1449). — 
In 1432 Charles, accusing Popes Martin V. and Eugenius VI. 
of favoring the English and of giving prelacies to foreign- 
ers, had ordained that no one should be admitted to eccle- 
siastical benefices, who was not a subject of the realm and 



GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES VII. 245 

well affected towards the king. Six years later he went 
further. He assembled the clergy of France at Bourges 
and presented for its acceptance an ordinance or pragmatic 
sanction, which recognized the authority of general councils 
as superior to that of the Pope, restored to churches and 
abbeys the right of electing their heads, forbade the pay- 
ment of annates, reservations, and provisions, and permitted 
the reception and publication of papal bulls in France only 
after approbation by the king. The great schism of the 
West ended in this reign by the declaration of obedience 
which the fathers of the Council of Basel made to Nicholas V. 

Renewal of Hostilities with England ; Conquest of Nor- 
mandy (1449-50). — With all these reforms accomplished, 
Charles felt himself strong enough to bring matters to a 
conclusion with the English. An Aragonese adventurer in 
the service of England, failing to receive money from the 
government of Henry VI., attacked in time of peace a rich 
town of Brittany, and gave it to his men to plunder in com- 
pensation for their arrears of pay. Immediately the king 
of France and the Duke of Brittany demanded reparation 
and indemnity from the English governor of Normandy. 
As the indemnity was not forthcoming, the French pro- 
ceeded to take it themselves. Dunois entered the province 
with a strong army. Lisieux, Mantes, Vernon, Evreux, 
Louviers, and Coutances were taken, or delivered up by 
the citizens without striking a blow. 

England was then upon the verge of the War of the Eoses, 
and troubled herself little about Normandy. The governor, 
Somerset, instead of concentrating his forces, scattered them 
in twenty garrisons : in negotiation he showed equal want 
of skill. Good order and ability were now on the side of 
the French, and victory passed over to them. In October, 
1449, they appeared before the walls of Eouen. In a 
moment all the bourgeoisie of Eouen was in arms ; but 
against the English, who withdrew into the castle, and were 
compelled to surrender, delivering to the king of France, 
with Eouen, the whole lower course of the Seine. 

England, pushed to extremities, sent Thomas Kyriel with 
six thousand men into Normandy. It was her last effort. 
In April, 1450, near the village of Fourmigny, the constable 
de Eichemont and the Count of Clermont attacked the 
English vigorously. Kyriel was defeated and left four 
thousand men upon the field. Vire, Bayeux, Avranches, 



246 THE ENGLISH EXPELLED FROM FRANCE. 

Caen, Domfront, and Falaise fell at once into the power of 
Charles. Finally, Cherbourg surrendered, and all Normandy 
had been acquired in a single year. What was more, the 
French army had become disciplined and obedient. 

Conquest of Guienne; End of the Hundred Years' War 
(1451-1453). — A month afterward, Dunois with twenty 
thousand soldiers marched against Guienne. The suburbs 
of Bordeaux were carried without difficulty. The burgesses 
of the town, well affected to England, who bought their 
wines, attempted defence, but soon opened the gates to the 
French (1451). 

Soon, however, the great city began to regret the English 
rule. It was now obliged to pay taxes and to furnish 
soldiers. The harbor was deserted, the warehouses were 
filled with unsold goods. The government of Henry VI. or, 
to speak more exactly, the government of Margaret of Anjou, 
needed a great success abroad in order to recover their 
prestige at home. The octogenarian Talbot was charged to 
bring back Guienne to the English rule. The first steps 
were easy. The inhabitants of Bordeaux themselves ad- 
mitted the English into their town, in September, 1452; 
almost all the province followed this example, and the king 
of France had to begin its conquest anew. 

In the spring of 1451 his troops began their march 
toward Guienne ; in July they began the siege of Castillon. 
Talbot hastened to attack them ; but their artillery, skil- 
fully managed by the brothers Bureau, mowed down the 
English ranks, and Talbot himself was slain. Then the 
French advanced from their fortifications and fell upon the 
disconcerted English, of whom they killed four thousand 
men. Two days after, Castillon surrendered, and other 
strong places soon after. The royal army closed around 
Bordeaux, francs archers overran the country ; the vessels 
lent the king by La Rochelle and Brittany blockaded the 
mouth of the Gironde. Bordeaux, threatened with famine, 
was obliged at this time to accept such conditions as the 
king was willing to grant. He deprived the town of its 
privileges, exacted an indemnity of a hundred thousand 
crowns, and ordered the banishment of twenty ringleaders, 
with confiscation of their goods, and also the construction of 
three citadels commanding the town. In October, 1453, 
Charles VII. made his triumphant entry into Bordeaux : the 
Hundred Years' War was finished. The English no longer 



GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES VII. 247 

possessed anything in France but Calais and two small 
towns near it. 

Capture of Constantinople (1453) ; the Vow of the Pheasant. 

— A great event was at this moment occurring at the other 
extremity of Europe. Constantinople, the last fragment of 
the Roman Empire, had fallen, and Mahomet II. sent for- 
ward his light cavalry, even into Hungary and Friuli, He 
had sworn to feed his horse its oats in Rome itself, upon 
the altar of St. Peter. The trembling Italians and panic- 
stricken Germany begged for a crusade, and all eyes, all 
hopes, were turned toward Erance, which three centuries and 
a half before had taken the lead. But the times had greatly 
changed. France, still exhausted, could think only of heal- 
ing its own wounds. One prince, however, might have replied 
to the pressing appeal of the Pontiff ; he who had so care- 
fully kept war away from his own provinces ; who had 
grown rich and powerful amid the disasters of others, — 
the Duke of Burgundy. To his court all that remained of 
chivalry in Europe had repaired. There men talked of 
tournaments and feats of arms, so that one might suppose 
himself returned to the times of Amadis and Roland ; and 
Philip the Good had founded the order of the Golden Fleece 
in the midst of the most magnificent festivities. The cru- 
sade offered to these new knights a fine opportunity, a 
peculiarly knightly war. 

In the Middle Ages men would have put on sackcloth 
and ashes, would have fasted and prayed, and then would 
have set out, full of enthusiasm, for Constantinople or 
Mcaea, for Antioch or Jerusalem. At the court of Bur- 
gundy, in the year 1454, quite another course was followed ; 
instead of a public fast, there was a colossal banquet, which 
would have absorbed a whole year's revenue of the king of 
France. At its conclusion, among other pageants, appeared 
a female representing Holy Church, come to implore the aid 
of Burgunclian chivalry. Then the king-at-arms entered, 
holding in his hand a pheasant richly adorned with a collar 
of gold, pearls, and precious stones, and Duke Philip the 
Good took a vow, first in the name of God and the Virgin, 
and afterward by the ladies and the pheasant, to go and 
fight against the Turk. All those present imitated him, 
and vied with each other in the extravagance of their vows . 
But in the height of their ardor these knights of the 
fifteenth century preserved their self-possession : each of 



248 THE ENGLISH EXPELLED FROM FRANCE. 

them, the duke included, had hedged his vow with prudent 
conditions. By virtue of these prudent conditions the duke 
did not set out ; no one set out ; no one had ever seriously 
thought of setting out. 

New Feudal Intrigues; the Duke of Burgundy and the 
Dauphin. — This fictitious feudalism took a far more genuine 
interest in the progress of French royalty, which, instead of 
tournaments and festivities, was making laws, organizing its 
finances, reforming its armies, driving out the English, and 
putting itself in a position to make itself feared, and there- 
fore obeyed. Without breaking with the king of France, the 
Duke of Burgundy constituted himself the supporter of all 
the discontented : he sought to attach to himself the heads 
of all the great families in the kingdom. One of them, the 
Duke of Alengon, plotting with the English, was arrested 
(1456) and condemned, prince of the blood as he was, to 
perpetual imprisonment. Another, John of Armagnac, 
attempted the same : a royal army seized his county, and 
the Parliament condemned him to banishment (1455). 

A more dangerous enemy was the very heir to the throne, 
the dauphin Louis. Charles, in order to occupy this restless 
spirit, sent him to his appanage of Dauphiny. There he 
turned the province upside down, doubtless effecting many 
improvements, but often also making changes for the sake 
of change ; and intrigued with every one, with the king's 
ministers and with his enemies, with the Duke of Alengon 
and the Duke of Burgundy, and gathered around him all 
those who were odious to Charles VII. In other words, he 
was as dangerous in Dauphiny as he had been in France. 
Finally, Charles sent a military force into Dauphiny. Louis 
fled into Franche-Comt6, whence he went to take refuge with 
the Duke of Burgundy. His hosts lavished honors and 
money upon him ; they put themselves entirely at his dis- 
posal ; they refused him only one thing : namely, the loan of 
an army with which to make war upon his father. The 
duke, already old, wished to end his life in peace. A war 
against France would have disturbed everything. It would 
have become necessary to increase the taxes, which perhaps 
would have provoked rebellion in those terrible communes of 
Flanders : he would have had virtually to abdicate, by en- 
trusting the command of the armies to his son, the young 
Count of Charolais. And who could tell what would become, 
in a prolonged contest, of these heterogeneous Burgundian 



GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES VII. 249 

territories ? For all these reasons the Duke of Burgundy, 
naturally a peaceable man, was disinclined to make war. 

Death of Charles VII. (1461). — But at the court of France 
there was uneasiness. Louis, from his retreat at Gennep, 
was spreading intrigues throughout the kingdom. Charles 
VII. for a moment thought of transferring the crown to his 
second son. He believed the dauphin capable of anything, 
and feared removal by poison. His constitution was weak- 
ened by excesses. Finally an incurable abscess formed in 
his mouth, and he died in July, 1461. 

Jacques Cceur. — Two great acts of ingratitude and iniquity 
rest upon the memory of this prince : the cowardly abandon- 
ment of Jeanne d'Arc to the English, and the condemnation 
of Jacques Coeur. This great citizen had at first been a 
mercer. He had travelled in Italy and the Levant. He 
had sought in Syria and in Egypt the merchandise of the 
East, and numerous vessels sailed the Mediterranean on his 
account. Called from Bourges by Charles VII. to take the 
office of argentier royal, that is to say, administrator of the 
revenues of the domain, he was associated for twelve years 
with the most important affairs of the government, and 
brought to the councils of the king and the management of 
his revenue, his clear intelligence and rigid honesty. He 
always knew how to provide in season the necessary re- 
sources for war, drawing upon his own treasury when there 
was no money in that of the king. " Sire, what I have is 
yours," he used to say to the king. The courtiers took him 
at his word : after a most unjust trial, they divided his spoils 
and caused him to be imprisoned in a convent. But his 
former agents, uniting, took him from it by force, and con- 
ducted him to Rome, where he was received by the Pope 
with great honor (1455) . He died the next year at Chios. 
Jacques Coeur had not only opened a new route to French 
commerce, but established relations between France and the 
Mohammedan princes. In 1447 the sultan of Egypt sent 
an embassy to the king. 

The receiver-general of the kingdom was also condemned, 
and perhaps with equal injvistice. The feudal aristocracy 
loved to take revenge for the superior abilities of the men 
of business and the fortunes which they acquired so rapidly, 
but not always scrupulously. For a long time yet, finan- 
ciers, merchants, and manufacturers had to submit to the 
haughtiness of the nobility, before taking its place. 



250 THE ENGLISH EXPELLED FROM FRANCE. 

Alain Chartier. — The battle of Agincourt had cost France 
a graceful poet, Duke Charles of Orleans, who whilecl away 
his long exile in England by the cultivation of poetry. But, 
strange to say, in these melodious verses of the exiled prince 
there is no remembrance of France, not a word for her mis- 
fortunes. The miseries of the country, which penetrated 
so deeply into the soul of Jeanne d'Arc, touched the patri- 
otic heart of a young Norman poet, Alain Chartier, not 
unjustly called the father of French eloquence. 

End of the Middle Ages. — The reign of Charles VII. ended 
the Middle Ages so far as France is concerned, and began 
modern times. In the centuries preceding, France had been 
the first to give shape to the feudal system, to begin the 
crusades, to originate chivalry, scholasticism, and Gothic arch- 
itecture, and to organize the bourgeoisie. With Charles VII. 
it had returned to the Roman system of standing armies 
and permanent taxes ; under Louis XL it was to complete 
the destruction of the aristocracy. It was therefore the 
Eoman idea of absolute monarchy which France took up 
anew and proceeded to realize. The other states of Europe 
were to follow France in this new path ; but, as it preceded 
them and guided them in it, it was to be the first to reap 
the profits, and even as it held the preponderance in Europe 
during the feudal epoch, it was also to hold it during the 
monarchical epoch. 



LOUIS XI. 251 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

LOUIS XI. (1461-1483) : HIS REIGN TO THE DEATH OP HIS 
BROTHER. 

(1461-1472 A.D.) 

Louis XI. — Feudalism supposed that it was saved by the 
accession of the dauphin. The Duke of Burgundy and an 
enormous train of great lords and retainers accompanied him 
to his consecration at Rheims. Philip the Good appeared 
almost to be the real king. He was at any rate the king's 
protector, who had given him shelter in time of persecu- 
tion. So Louis refused him nothing : he allowed him as a 
mark of honor to nominate twenty-four counsellors to the 
Parliament, none of whom, it is true, was ever allowed to 
take his seat ; he granted him free passage of merchandise 
from one frontier to the other, on condition that the Parlia- 
ment should register the concession, and took good care that 
the Parliament should never register it ; he, at his request, 
X^ardoned the Duke of Alengon, and kept the duke's children 
and strongholds. The Duke of Burgundy returned, loaded 
with honors and fine speeches, but ruined. Then Louis XL 
set to work and began in reality that reign which, however 
we may judge the king himself, must be reckoned among 
the most important in French history. 

Forces still at the Disposal of Feudalism. — The reign 
opened in the midst of the most favorable circumstances, 
so far as foreign affairs were concerned. None of the states 
which touched France were in a position to disturb Louis 
XI. in the enterprises which he proposed. But the internal 
condition of France offered many obstacles. Feudalism still 
had considerable forces at its disposal. It had at its head 
an aristocracy of appanaged princes, relatives of the kings, 
powerful families, rich because of their vast domains, proud 
of their origin, formidable by reason of their claims to royal 
independence. They were like so many lesser states placed 
upon the flanks and in the centre of the kingdom : the house 
of Brittany, with its old traditions of independence and its 



252 LOUIS XI. 

too friendly relations witli England ; tlie house of Bourbon, 
mistress of five or six great provinces in the heart of France; 
the house of Anjou (Anjou, Maine, Provence), fortunately 
weakened by the dispersion of its estates and by its foreign 
ambitions ; the house of Orleans blockading Paris with its 
possessions, so to speak ; the houses of Alengon and of 
Artois ; and finally the house of Burgundy, with its terri- 
tories and dependencies in the east, in the Netherlands, and 
on the Sonime, and the exemption from all royal control 
granted by the treaty of Arras. Then there were in the 
south the houses of Penthi^vre, Foix, Armagnac, Albret, 
and La Tr6mouille ; of St. Pol in Picardy, of Montmorency, 
Laval, La Tour, Clermont-Tonnerre, and Ch^lon. 

Precipitate Reforms ; Discontent of the People, University, 
Parliament, Clergy, and Nobility. — At the beginning of his 
reign, Louis XL made many enemies by precipitate reforms. 
He removed most of the ofiicers appointed by his father, 
and restored those whom the latter had condemned. The 
people expected a diminution of taxes ; but the perpetual 
taille was rais-ed from 1,800,000 livres to 3,000,000, and a 
riot breaking out at Rheims, he hanged a large number of 
citizens and cropped the ears of others. He notified the 
University of Paris of a papal prohibition of their mixing 
in the affairs of the king and the city and of closing their 
classes at unseasonable times ; that is, pouring out twenty- 
five thousand students into the streets all ready for a riot. 
The judges of the Parliaanent were no better; treated : the 
king restrained the singularly extended jurisdictions of the 
Parliaments of Paris and Toulouse by erecting at their ex- 
pense, in 1462, the Parliament of Bordeaux. He had already 
while dauphin organized, in 1453, that of Grenoble. In 1479 . 
he founded that of Dijon. The Church was not better satis- 
fied ; the pragmatic sanction of Bourges seemed to Louis to 
give too much independence to the clergy and too much 
power to the nobility. He revoked it in spite of the re- 
monstrances of the Parliament, and demanded of the Church 
and the churchmen an exact list of all their property, in 
order that he might check their encroachments. 

The aristocracy was still more seriously threatened. It 
saw the king bestowing titles of nobility with a lavish hand 
and putting restrictions upon their rights of hunting, in 
order to defend agriculture against the injuries of aristo- 
cratic amusements. At the same time he availed himself 



LOUIS XL 253 

of feudal principles so far as to reclaim obsolete feudal dues 
and arrears, and demanded immediate payment of tliem. 
The highest ranks of nobility, even, found themselves at- 
tacked. He deprived the house of Bourbon of the govern- 
ment of Guienne and gave it to a member of the house of 
Anjou, in order to embroil these two families. He deprived 
his brother Charles of his government of Berry. With the 
house of Brittany he had many disagreements. 

Foreign Policy of Louis XI. — This activity, more ardent 
than wise, appears from the beginning even in foreign 
politics. In his first year he began negotiations with the 
Duke of Milan and the Florentines, in order to recover 
Genoa and to restore Naples to the house of Anjou, which 
would have made him the arbiter of Italy. But finally, 
instead of dominating it by his armies, he resigned himself 
to the policy of holding it by alliances. In 1463 he ceded 
Genoa to Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, but he arranged 
that Galeazzo, the duke's son, should marry Bonne of Savoy, 
his sister-in-law. Sure thus of Piedmont, in which his 
father-in-law ruled ; of Milan, in which his nephew was to 
rule; of Florence, which regarded him as its protector, 
he exercised a strong influence throughout the peninsula. 
When Francesco Sforza died suddenly in 1466, he declared 
that he would spare neither men nor money in order to 
guarantee to Galeazzo his inheritance ; the Florentines, in- 
stigated by him, spoke with equal decision, and peace was 
maintained. 

Lending two hundred thousand crowns to the king of 
Aragon, then in great straits, Louis received Eoussillon and 
Cerdana in pledge (1462). He made it still more his 
object to regain possession of the towns which his father 
had surrendered in 1435 in order to obtain the Burgundian 
alliance. The old duke, vigorously importuned, and always 
short Of money because of his magnificent expenditure, 
promised to accept the ransom of these towns, hoping, how- 
ever, that the king would not be able to get together the 
necessary four hundred thousand crowns. In a few days 
Louis had them : he would have exhausted the exchanges of 
all his good towns rather than not pay them; and the 
important line of the Somme came again into his power. 
The Count of Charolais, the violent-tempered son of the 
Duke of Burgundy, would not pardon this acquisition, 
wrung from the old age of his father. He had, moreover, 
other grievances. 



254 LOUIS XL 

League of the Public Weal (1465). — Louis had not 
reigned four years before every one was against him. The 
people, forced to meet by taxation governmental necessities 
which they did not yet understand; the bourgeoisie, injured 
in their class interests ; the clergy, threatened in respect to 
their property ; the lesser nobility, threatened in respect 
to their dearest rights and habits ; the upper aristocracy, 
threatened in their claims of sovereignty, — all these classes, 
so profoundly different, so often hostile to each other, found 
themselves temporarily united in one point : their common 
desire to circumscribe the royal authority. The king tried 
to calm this general animosity by a new means, by address- 
ing himself to public opinion. He assembled at Eouen the 
deputies of the northern towns, and in the presence of these 
simple burgesses he, the king, condescended to justify all 
that he had done. After the burgesses, he assembled the 
princes ; he addressed them with that prodigious eloquence 
of which he was master. He recounted to them the whole 
story of his life, his exile and misfortunes, the embarrass- 
ments which had surrounded him at his accession, and all 
the good that he had already accomplished : the assuring of 
order, the re-establishment of security, the aggrandizement 
of French territory. The royal harangue made an impres- 
sion upon all the lords ; yet scarcely had the assembly dis- 
solved when they were concerting measures for attacking 
him. They drew over to their side the Duke of Berry, his 
brother, a young man of eighteen, and made him their head. 
This rising of feudal society against the royal authority was 
called by the princes the League of the Public Weal : they 
were acting only out of pity for the misfortunes of the king- 
dom "under the discord and piteous government of Louis XL" 

Louis counted upon the aid of the old Duke of Burgundy. 
But in March, 1465, Philip the Good fell into a state of 
dotage, and the Count of Charolais, Charles the E,ash or 
the Bold, took the direction of affairs. At once the dukes 
of Bourbon, Berry, and Brittany issued their manifestoes. 
Then came the hostile declarations of the other nobility. 
Every one seemed eager to join the League of the Public 
Weal. Louis judged that so many princes, lords, and armies 
would not easily be got into motion, and that he might win 
the day by superior activity. His plan was soon formed ; 
to check in the north the advance of Charles the Eash on 
Paris, in the west that of Duke Prancis II. ; to use the 



LOUIS XL 255 

respite thus gained to crusli the Duke of Bourbon and the 
allies of the south between his own army, the Italian troops 
which Francesco Sforza was sending him, and the auxiliaries 
which his good friends the lords of Armagnac and Nemours 
would bring him ; then to return and defeat separately the 
dukes of Brittany and Burgundy before they could unite. 

Battle of Montlhery (1465). — The king took the field 
with that disciplined army and excellent artillery which his 
fai;her had bequeathed to him. But his difficulties con- 
stantly increased. The Count of Armagnac and the Duke 
of Nemours came indeed, but it was to join the king's 
enemies. There were similar treasons in the west and in 
the north. The Bretons and the Burgundians were allowed 
to enter the kingdom. In July Charles the Bold appeared 
in the outskirts of Paris without having encountered any 
obstacle. The possession of Paris was a matter of life and 
death to Louis XI., who, leaving the Duke of Bourbon and 
the southern confederates, thought now of nothing else than 
how to get back into his capital. He sent flattering letters 
to it. But Paris seemed insensible to the royal cajoleries. 
Its most influential body, the University, declined to arm 
its students. The burgesses and the people showed similar 
coolness. Louis XL had therefore strong reasons for has- 
tening. Moreover, the dukes of Brittany and Berry were 
advancing, and it was important to arrive before they did. 

On the morning of the 16th of July the king found him- 
self at Montlhery. The Burgundians barred his path ; the 
king eluded them. It was done at the expense of his left 
wing, but he had attained his end; leaving the count to 
Sound his trumpets over the field of battle to show that he 
had gained the victory, he hastened to enter Paris. He 
armed the burgesses ; he accepted the assistance of a coun- 
cil of six burgesses, six members of the Parliament, and six 
clerks of the University, endeavoring by all means to gain 
Paris, and believing that if he had Paris he would have 
Prance, whatever should happen. Meanwhile among the 
confederates nothing was done in concert or in season. The 
young dukes of Berry and of Brittany advanced slowly ; 
but jealousies between them revived. The Duke of Berry, 
as future king, already excited distrust, especially on the 
part of the Count of Charolais. 

Treaties of Conflans and St. Maur (1465) . — Though Louis 
XL was a man of much personal bravery, his favorite com- 



256 LOUIS XL 

bats were those of intelligence, finesse, and deception. So 
lie negotiated incessantly ; sought to sow divisions between 
these lords, who were already so little in agreement ; and 
spared neither money nor promises. As it became evident 
that the league would result in nothing, some found it 
already a safer plan to sell themselves to the king. Armag- 
nac, Nemours, and the Count of St. Pol were among the 
number, the first demanding money, the second domains, the 
third the constable's sword. ISTothing was refused, and 
the king saw the league already dissolved by his address, 
the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy isolated and perhaps 
mutually hostile. Unfortunately the king could not be 
everywhere present at once, and wherever he was not pres- 
ent he was betrayed. Pontoise, Eouen, Evreux, Caen, 
Beauvais, Peronne, went over to the princes. This move- 
ment might gain them Paris. Louis perceived that it was 
necessary to bring negotiations rapidly to a conclusion. 
Peace was concluded in October (treaties of Conflans with 
Charolais, and of St. Maur with the princes). His brother 
was given Normandy, the suzerainty of the county of Eu, 
and the duchy of Alengon, with the nomination to offices in 
them. The Duke of Burgundy exacted Boulogne, Guines, 
Peronne, and the towns of the Somme ; the Duke of Brit- 
tany, Etampes and exemption from appeals to Parliament, 
the direct nomination of bishops, dispensation from feudal 
dues, the right of coining money, and in a word, a little 
kingdom ; the Duke of Lorraine, the dukes of Bourbon and 
Nemours, the counts of Armagnac and Dunois, and many 
others, domains and enormous pensions, without counting 
promises for the future. 

All this was not exactly evidence of regard for the public 
weal. Still it was necessary to have an appearance of doing 
something for it. It was accordingly agreed that a com- 
mission of thirty-six notables should be charged to make 
inquiry into abuses and disorders, with full power to remedy 
them by an ordinance which the king should, without fail, 
sanction within a fortnight. 

Intrigues to embarrass the Duke of Burgundy ; Normandy 
retaken by the King (1466). — Such a treaty, strictly exe- 
cuted, would have ruined the monarchy and France. But 
one might be sure that Louis XL Avould not execute it if 
there were any chance to do otherwise, and already the 
Parliament, thoroughly under his control, was refusing to 



LOUIS XL 257 

register it. Warned by severe experience, Louis resolved 
to be henceforth more prudent; but his prudence would 
make use of all resources, stratagem, perfidy, cruelty. 

The cession of Normandy was especially dangerous ; for 
by this province, the domains of the dukes of Brittany and 
Burgundy touched each other, and all the coast from Nantes 
to Dunkirk was open to the English. Louis from the first 
day of the treaty began devising means to get back the gift. 
The Duke of Brittany and the new Duke of Normandy were 
soon embroiled. Aided by circumstances, Louis kept Charles 
of Charolais employed elsewhere. The free city of Li^ge 
had risen in revolt against its bishop, and, encouraged by 
the king of France, had driven him out and vigorously 
attacked the Burgundian territory of Limburg. Dmant and 
Ghent followed the example of Li6ge. Having thus occu- 
pied Count Charles, and having bought the Duke of Brittany's 
acquiescence, Louis entered Normandy. In a few weeks 
the whole province was in his hands. The Duke of Bur- 
gundy had been unable to do more than write mildly to the 
king, who replied that he had been compelled against his 
will to act thus, that his brother and the Normans could not 
agree, that, moreover, an ordinance of Charles V. forbade the 
cession of that province as an appanage. 

Charles could not make reply or act, and the heads of the 
other princely houses also refrained from interference, the 
king having won them over one after another, or purchased 
their neutrality. The house of Bourbon had been won by 
giving to Duke John almost a kingdom to rule in the centre 
and the south of France, and to the duke's brother, Pierre de 
Beaujeu, the hand of the king's daughter Anne in marriage ; 
the house of Anjou by other presents ; the house of Orleans 
by attaching old Dunois to his cause ; finally, the friend and 
confidant of Charles the Bold, the Count of St. Pol, by mak- 
ing him constable of the realm, captain of Eouen, and gov- 
ernor of Normandy. The king won over the burgesses, and 
especially those of Paris, with as much care as the princes. 
He granted them permanent possession of all offices and 
exemption from all taxation ; he armed them, he carefully 
fortified their city, he made himself a citizen of Paris as 
far as he could. 

New Coalition against the King (1467) . — No one hence- 
forth thought of disputing the king's possession of Nor- 
mandy. Charles the Eash, who this year became the Duke 



258 LOUIS XL 

of Burgundy, unable to do anything alone, allied himself 
with Edward IV. of England. Duke Francis II. of Brit- 
tany, also, alarmed by the rapid successes of the king, 
turned anew against him, occupied Caen and Alen9on, sum- 
moned the English to his aid, and offered them their choice 
of twelve fortresses. 

States-General of Tours (1468). — In the presence of this 
new danger Louis assembled at Tours the States-General of 
the kingdom, and asked them simply if they desired that 
Normandy should cease to be part of the domains of the 
crown. The States replied with a decided negative, and de- 
clared that the king's brother ought to content himself with 
the sixty thousand livres a year offered him. As for the 
Duke of Brittany, he should be summoned to evacuate the 
towns which he had seized, and if he did not do so, should 
be driven out by force ; and the Duke of Burgundy should 
be invited to assist in carrying out these measures. Then 
Louis rapidly reduced the Duke of Brittany to submission. 

Interview of Peronne (1468). — Thus relieved of danger 
from the Bretons, and having under his orders an excellent 
army and a tine body of artillery, the king might, it would 
seem, have accepted the conflict with the Duke of Bur- 
giindy. But Louis XL was not fond of battles, in which 
there was so great scope for chance, for cowardice, or for 
treason. He remembered the great defeats of the preceding 
century and of this one. He knew himself to be surrounded 
by traitors. He knew, moreover, his intellectual superiority 
over his rival, and counted on obtaining by negotiation all 
the substantial results of victory. But for this it was 
necessary to go himself. Some thought that there might be 
danger in putting himself thus into the hands of Charles 
the Bash, but the king did not fear. How could the chief 
of knights be guilty of public treason ? Moreover, the 
king obtained an explicit safe-conduct from the duke. Con- 
fiding in this, he repaired almost alone to Peronne, where 
Charles the Bold received him with respect (Oct. 8) ; 
but he saw his most violent enemies surrounding the duke. 
He demanded for safety to be lodged in the castle, a castle 
of dismal memory, for it was in it that Herbert of Ver- 
mandois had held captive the king of France, Charles the 
Simple. 

Meanwhile they were discussing, amicably enough, the 
conditions of the treaty, when, on the 10th, word came to 



LOUIS XL 259 

the duke that Li6ge had risen in revolt ; that its bishop, 
Louis of Bourbon, had been killed, and with him the Bur- 
gundian envoy, Humbercourt ; and that at the head of the 
insurgents had been seen two emissaries of the king of- 
France. In reality, neither the bishop nor Humbercourt 
had been killed, and to excite such an outbreak was really 
quite contrary to the interest of the king. But the duke 
became furiously enraged, uttered frightful threats, and had 
the gates of the castle closed. Louis was a prisoner. 
'' When so great a lord is taken," says Comines, " he is not 
delivered." We may add that, in those times, neither could 
he be kept ; the only cotirse was to put him to death. But 
then his brother Charles would ascend the throne, and his 
brother was at once the ally and the guest of the Duke of 
Brittany. Was it worth while to incur the guilt of such a 
crime in order to place the crown on the head of a prince 
devoted to the Breton influence ? It seemed better to ob- 
tain from the king important concessions, to humiliate him, 
and by this humiliation to ruin him in the face of public 
opinion : a calculation as ill-conceived as the act was dis- 
loyal. 

"This night, which was the third, the said duke never 
took off his clothes. Only he lay down two or three times 
upon his bed, and then he walked up and down ; for such 
was his fashion when he was troubled. In the morning he 
was in greater anger than ever, using threats, and ready to 
do violent deeds. Finally, however, he became pacified to 
this extent, that if the king would swear peace, and would 
go with him to Li^ge, and aid him in avenging himself and 
my lord of Li^ge, his near relative, he would be content ; 
and suddenly he set out to go to the king's chamber, and 
bear to him this proposition." The king prudently con- 
sented to both conditions. It was also agreed that his 
brother, in exchange for Normandy, should receive Cham- 
pagne and Brie. 

To give Champagne to his brother was to give it to 
Charles the Bold, who would have in it a direct means of 
communication between his estates of Flanders and his 
estates of Burgundy; to march against Li^ge, which dis- 
played his standard, was an act of baseness ; but the princes 
of that age put success first and honor last. Louis, there- 
fore, followed Charles to the siege and fought there bravely. 
The city taken, and the cup of humiliation drained to the 



260 LOUIS XL 

dregs, he departed for Paris, first skilfully surprising the 
duke into consenting that the king's brother, if not content 
with Champagne, should have something else instead. 

The King's Efforts toward Retrieval ; Cardinal Balue. — 
Thus the wily king, taken in a snare, had given his ene- 
mies only the trouble of shutting the gate, and of dictating 
to him humiliating conditions if he wished to escape. Louis 
had henceforth but one thought, — to efface this recollection 
by undoing the disadvantageous treaty. Instead of the poor 
and dismal district of Champagne, he gave his brother the 
fair and fertile province of Guienne. Charles gladly ac- 
cepted the exchange, which, however, at the same time 
removed him from the Duke of Burgundy and embroiled 
him with the English. 

One of the king's counsellors, Balue, a man of humble 
origin whom he had made bishop of Angers and cardinal, 
had been foremost in urging him toward the interview of 
Peronne. Louis discovered that he was secretly in corre- 
spondence with the Duke of Burgundy. He seized him and 
his accomplice, the bishop of Verdun, and shut them up in 
two iron cages, in which they remained for ten years. He 
sent an army against the Duke of Nemours, who made his sub- 
mission, and against the Count of Armagnac, who escaped, 
but suffered forfeiture of goods. At the same time the 
Duke of Brittany swore to renounce all foreign alliances, 
and the king provided the Earl of Warwick with the means 
for overthrowing in England Edward the Fourth, brother- 
in-law of Charles the Bold. 

Having now again isolated the Duke of Burgundy, he 
ventured to attack him directly : he convoked at Tours an 
assembly of notables, mostly magistrates, before whom he 
stated his grievances against Charles, whom he accused of 
having attacked the ports of Normandy in time of peace, of 
having demanded from his vassals, though subjects of the 
crown, an oath to serve him against all persons "without 
excepting my lord the king," of having seized the goods of 
Erenchmen at the Antwerp fair, etc. Hereupon the nota- 
bles declared that the duke had violated the treaty of 
Peromie ; and the king, in consequence, immediately seized 
the places which were within his reach, — St. Quentin, 
Amiens, and others. He set a numerous army in the field, 
and the duke was taken unawares. 

New Coalition against the King (1471) ; Death of the 



LOUIS XI. 261 

King's Brother (1472). — But the Duke of Brittany, the 
new Duke of Guienne, and even the head of the army, 
the constable of St. Pol, alarmed at the rapid progress 
of the king, were already betraying him. A dauphin had 
been born in the preceding year, and the Duke of Guienne, 
being no longer heir to the crown, found it his interest to 
form anew the league of the princes. Louis, perceiving the 
existence of plots, thought it wise to stop and arrange a 
truce with the Duke of Burgundy. 

So Louis XL found it once more necessary to break 
through the thousand bands in which the aristocracy sought 
to entangle the crown. The court of his brother was the 
centre of all these intrigues. Through him a new and great 
feudal house was in process of formation. The Duke of 
Burgundy was offering him his only daughter in marriage ; 
that is to say, was offering the hope of some day joining to 
his Aquitanian possessions estates n'ore extended, more 
populous, and more wealthy than those' of the king himself. 
The king was alarmed at the very idea of such a union. 
His brother now became the chief obstacle in his path. 
Regardless of the king's offers, Charles of Guienne made 
preparations for war, convoked the ban and arriere-ban of 
his duchy, named an enemy of the king, the Count of Ar- 
magnac, as commander of his troops, and requested the Pope 
to release him from his oath of allegiance. Suddenly he 
died, poisoned, it was rumored, by his almoner, the abbot 
of St. Jean d'Ang61y. The documents of the abbot's trial 
were suppressed by Louis XL, and whether the death was 
from poison, and if so, whether the poisoning was the deed 
of Louis, are questions which history cannot solve. But if 
the king's guilt remains doubtful, there is no doubt of the 
joy which the illness and death of his brother caused him. 

War with the Duke of Burgundy (1472). — This event 
destroyed all the Duke of Burgundy's plans. In his resent- 
ment he published a manifesto in which he accused the 
king of lese-majesty, treason, and parricide. To avenge 
the prince, he crossed the 'Somme and entered the kingdom, 
swearing to put everything to fire and sword. The war 
was indeed conducted as the duke announced. On captur- 
ing the little town of Nesle he ordered that every one in it 
should be put to death. Men, women, and children were 
massacred in the great church, in which they had taken 
refuge. 



262 LOUIS XL 

Sucli slaughter was a warning to the other towns to de- 
fend themselves well ; so when the Burgundian army arrived 
before Beauvais, the burgesses stoutly resisted its assault ; 
even the women took part in the defence, one of them, 
famous under the name of Jeanne Hachette, especially dis- 
tinguishing herself. Charles was not prepared to under- 
take a siege, and after a new assault, which cost him fifteen 
hundred men, he broke up his camp and turned toward Nor- 
mandy, burning all small towns that lay in his path, but 
followed close at hand by the French, who cut oft: his sup- 
plies. Repulsed before Dieppe, he returned to Rouen, where 
he waited for the Duke of Brittany ; then, accusing Francis 
II. of failing to keep his promise, he retreated to his estates. 
Duke Francis, meanwhile, had been repeatedly defeated by 
the king, and in October signed an advantageous peace. 
Soon after Charles the Rash also accepted a truce. 

The treaty of P6ronne, by which it was supposed that 
the king of France would be reduced so low, was brought 
to naught. And s:nce the king had extricated himself so 
skilfully from so bad a situation, all prudent men began to 
think that if one must chose a master it was best to take 
Louis XI. Philippe Comines, the counsellor of the Duke 
of Burgundy, and Odet d'Aydie, lord of Lescun, the coun- 
sellor of the Duke of Brittany, the two men most capable 
of comprehending and practising the politics of stratagem 
and of success, both passed over at this time into the service 
of the king of France. 



THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 263 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE REIGN OF LOUIS XI. 
(14'73-1483 A.D.) 

The Duke of Burgundy and his Territories. — Comines and 
Lescun were right in judging that success was henceforth to 
be on the side of the king of France. Duke Charles was pre- 
paring his own destruction by attempting a task beyond his 
powers. His possessions were composed of the duchy and 
county of Burgundy and of the Netlierlands ; in other words, 
of a French part and a Flemish part, a feudal part and a 
communal part, and with no communication between them. 
Such a state, without natural boundaries, without centre, 
without national language, could not, at an epoch when 
great nationalities were forming, be otherwise than frail 
and ephemeral. 

Ancient Lotharingia had included, in the south, all the 
lands between the Cevennes and the Alps, in the north all 
those between the Ehine and the Scheldt. To expand to 
these limits was the design which the duke entertained. 
The difficulties of such a task are manifest. Its accomplish- 
ment would require successful contest against France, Ger- 
many, Switzerland, Lorraine, and Provence, all of which 
would feel themselves threatened by such a revival of Caro- 
lingian arrangements. ISText, it would be necessary to fuse 
together all these peoples, to induce the men of Marseilles 
and the men of Nymwegen to live together under one rule, 
to find a real centre to this long strip of territor}^, to subdue 
the unconquerable communes of Flanders, the stout soldiers 
of Dauphiny, the Swiss mountaineers, to substitute uni- 
formity for all this utter diversity, — a task in reality 
impossible. 

Acquisitions (1466-1473).— In 146S and 1473 we see 
some steps taken toward governmental centralization ; the 
institution of a paymaster-general for all the Burgundian 
dominions, a common supreme court, and a uniform military 
organization. But Charles cared much more for acquisi- 



264 THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 

tions than for institutions. In 1469 the old Duke of Gelder- 
land sold him his duchy. On the death of the Duke of 
Lorraine, Charles compelled his heir to give up to him four 
strong places on the frontiers, with a right of free passage 
across the country. In the same year (1473) the elector 
of Cologne designated him as protector of that electorate. 
Shortly before, a needy Austrian prince, the Archduke Sig- 
ismund, had, for a small sum of money, pledged to him the 
landgraviate of upper Alsace and the county of Ferrette. 
This give the duke a passage between Franche-Comt^ and 
Luxemburg, and a basis of operations against the free cities 
of the Rhine and of Switzerland (1469). 

Charles desires to be crowned King. — The duke now 
desired public recognition of the complete practical inde- 
pendence which he enjoyed, and the exchange of his ducal 
coronet for a kingly crown. He applied to the traditional 
bestower of crowns, the emperor of Germany, offering to 
Frederick III. the hand of his daughter Mary for Frederick's 
son Maximilian, and with her the richest inheritance in 
Christendom, if Frederick would erect his Burgundian pos- 
sessions into a kingdom. The proposition was accepted, and 
an interview arranged at Trier, at which the last details 
were to be fixed. But neither of the two sovereigns was 
willing to be the first to execute his agreement. Charles 
had no desire to adopt a needy and possibly troublesome 
son-in-law ; Frederick feared to arouse opposition in the 
empire if he aggrandized the power of the Burgundian 
duke, already so menacing. The conference broke up with- 
out accomplishing its purpose. 

League against the Duke of Burgundy (1474-1475). — At 
the same time word came to the duke that a coalition was 
being formed against him by the Archduke Sigismund, the 
towns of the Rhine, the Swiss, and the king of France. The 
archduke at once redeemed Alsace. The Swiss entered 
Franche-Comt6 and defeated the Burgundians in a bloody 
battle. Meanwhile Charles was engaged, in behalf of the 
elector of Cologne, in besieging the little town of Neuss, 
near that city : the arrival of an enormous German army 
compelled him to raise the siege. The Duke of Lorraine 
sent him a message of defiance. The king of France was 
seizing his towns in Picardy and advancing into Artois, and 
his strongest ally was making peace with King Louis. 

Edward's IV.'s Invasion of France (1475). — Urged by 



THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 265 

Charles, and needing at home the prestige of military siic- 
cess, Edward IV., king of England, agreed to invade France. 
He landed at Calais with a magnificent army, expecting to 
find the duke there with all his forces. Charles sent word 
that he could not come, but that the constable St. Pol 
would open all the fortresses to the English. On this assur- 
ance, Edward pushed forward to the Somme ; biit when he 
approached St. Quentin, the constable's men opened fire 
upon him. Edward was by this time greatly irritated 
toward allies who, after having summoned him to their 
assistance, treated him thus ; the king's skill accomplished 
the rest. First Louis bought the king's herald, then some 
of the English lords, then the king himself. The latter's 
terms were high ; he received seventy-five thousand crowns 
foi; the costs of the war, an annual pension of fifty thousand, 
and the marriage of his daughter with the dauphin (August, 
1475) . There was nothing heroic about such negotiations ; 
but Louis had an eye to results alone, and was quite content 
that the treaty should be called la treve marchcmde. 

Charles conquers Lorraine (1475) and invades Switzer- 
land (1476). — Charles also made peace with Louis XL, in 
order to be free to bring matters to a conclusion with Lor- 
raine and the Swiss. Louis prudently refrained from inter- 
fering to save Lorraine, and in ISTovember Charles entered 
Nancy. Soon after, in midwinter, and with an exhausted 
army, he crossed the Jura, intending to subdue the Swiss, 
who had just been ravaging all Franche-Comt^. These free 
peasants were the best soldiers in the world, but Charles 
utterly despised them. Attacking the little town of Gran- 
son, he, in order to induce the garrison to surrender, promised 
them their lives ; then, when they had surrendered, he had 
them hanged. All Switzerland was aroused at the news of 
this perfidy. The confederated army of Schwyz, Bern, 
Solothurn, and Freiburg marched to Cranson and fell upon 
the Burgundian troops in a narrow plain where their cavalry 
and artillery could not readily be used, and where the Swiss 
infantry, with their long spears, easily had the advantage. 
The unexpected arrival of the forces of Uri, Unterwaldeu, 
and Luzern completed their discomfiture, and they fled in 
panic. The duke's losses were small, but his prestige was 
destroyed. His sword, his tent, his diamonds, his ducal 
seal, even his collar of the Golden Fleece, remained in the 
hands of the Swiss. 



266 THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 

The duke gave himself up wholly to thoughts of revenge. 
He gathered together soldiers from all sides in order to 
form a new army. With thirty-six thousand men he set out 
for Lausanne, expecting rapid successes. But while he was 
delayed for three weeks before Morat, the cantons gathered 
together their forces and received assistance from abroad. 
Then the Swiss army set out from Bern. Charles the Rash, 
though warned, took no precautions. Even when the Swiss 
were already at his intrenchments he still refused to believe 
that they would dare to attack him. But they rushed upon 
him with their usual impetuous valor, seized his batteries, 
shut in the Burgundians between their main body, their rear- 
guard, the garrison of Morat, and the lake, and slaughtered 
eight or ten thousand men, in addition to those who were 
drowned. 

Battle of Nancy (1477) ; Death of the Duke of Burgundy. 
— The great Duke of Burgundy, defeated and forced to flee, 
soon found himself obliged to make head against the Swiss, 
Louis XL, and the young Duke of Lorraine, whom he had 
dispossessed. This last attack was the most dangerous, for 
Lorraine was the connecting link between his provinces, the 
natural centre of the Burgundian empire. Charles hastened 
to relieve Nancy. He was too late ; the city had been taken 
three days before. But Charles immediately set himself to 
recover it. His enemies ]3ushed their preparations rapidly. 
Louis XL and the Duke of Lorraine hired German and 
Swiss mercenaries ; the duke appeared before Nancy with 
twenty thousand men in January, 1477. Charles had only 
four thousand soldiers ; but no remonstrance could move 
him to avoid battle. The very next day he moved upon 
the enemy through deep snow, expecting rather to perish 
than to win. In a few minutes the little Burgundian army 
was scattered, captured, or slain. The duke himself per- 
ished by the hand of an unknown enemy. Louis XL was 
filled with delight at the news. 

Euin of the House of Aleneon (1473-1474). — As soon as 
Louis had seen Charles the Rash begin to engage in these 
hostilities, he perceived that the duke would have occupa- 
tion enough for a time, and that he himself would have 
opportunity to settle matters with those who had so many 
times tiirned against him. At his accession he had released 
the Duke of Alen9on from the imprisonment to which 
Charles VII. had condemned him, in commutation of his 



THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 267 

death-sentence. Alengon, on being set free, proceeded to 
assassinate those who had borne witness against him ; he 
counterfeited money, and entered into tlie League of the 
Public "Weal and all the conspiracies formed against the 
king ; he even offered to sell his duchy of Alengon and his 
county of Perche to the Duke of Burgundy. In 1473 
Louis had him arrested and delivered over to the Par- 
liament, taking the precaution to distribute his property 
among his judges in advance. The court for the second 
time condemned him to capital punishment. The king 
granted him his life, but kept him in prison until he died, 
two years later. His innocent son, by the arts of those to 
whom the father's property had been granted, was en- 
trapped into writing to the Duke of Brittany, to ask for an 
asylum in his dominions, and was then condemned to per- 
petual imprisonment for having done it. 

Ruin of the House of Armagnac (1475) . — John V., the 
wicked Count of Armagnac, tried before the Parliament in 
Charles VII.'s time on charges of incest, murder, and for- 
gery, had been condemned, but had escaped. One of the 
first acts of Louis XL, on his accession, was to restore to 
him his domains, and grant him complete immunity for 
all his crimes. The count's gratitude was of the sort 
that might have been expected. He was constantly found 
among the enemies of the king, an ally of the Duke of Bur- 
gundy, of the Duke of Guienne, of the king of England. 
Louis seized the first moment of tranquillity which the 
ambitious projects of Charles the Bold afforded him, to 
punish Armagnac. 1\\ 1473 he sent the cardinal of Alby to 
besiege Lectoure. During negotiations the cardinal seized 
a gate of the town. John of Armagnac was slain before 
the eyes of his wife ; she, then in pregnancy, was poisoned ; 
and the soldiers committed such slaughter that only seven 
of the inhabitants remained alive. 

Ruin of the House of Nemours (1477). — The house of 
Nemours Avas a younger branch of the house of Armagnac. 
At the beginning of his reign, Louis had unwisely given to 
Jacques d' Armagnac, under the name of the duchy of Ne- 
mours, immense possessions in the regions of Meaux, Cha- 
lons, Langres, Sens, etc. The League of the Public Weal 
came, and Nemours went over to the king's enemies. At 
the time of the treaty of Confians he returned to Louis, 
swore fidelity to him, and received from him the govern- 



268 THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 

ment of Paris and tle-de-Erance ; less tlian a year afterward 
lie was again found among the enemies of the crown. 
Frightened by the measures taken against his kinsman of 
Armagnac, he made a new submission, and took a new oath 
of the most solemn character. Two years later, at the 
height of the king's difficulties, the duke refused him all 
aid, and, watching events, stood ready to seize Languedoc. 
When delivered from danger of the English, Louis besieged 
Nemours in his castle of Carlat, took him prisoner, and 
had him conducted to the Bastile, loaded with chains, and 
placed in an iron cage, with orders that he should never be 
taken out of it except in order to be tortured, and that he 
should be tortured thoroughly " and made to talk." Judges 
among whom the king had, according to his custom, divided 
in advance the propert^^ of the accused, took down his con- 
fession and drew up the indictment, on which he was then 
brought before the Parliament. Nemours confessed all and 
wrote a most touching letter to the king. Three members 
of the Parliament voted in his favor. Louis forthwith sus- 
pended them from their office, regardless of the remon- 
strances of their colleagues. Condemnation was pronounced, 
and the duke beheaded (1477). 

A brother of John of Armagnac and a member of the 
powerful house of Albret, detected in plots, were impris- 
oned and beheaded respectively. These executions taught 
the nobles of the South, so often rebellious, to respect the 
law and the king. The king of Aragon, who had pledged 
Eoussillon to Louis, stirred up rebellion in the province, 
hoping thus to recover it without having to restore the 
mone}^ Louis sent a good army, which took Perpignan, 
and closed access to Prance on that side (1474). 

Ruin of the House of St. Pol (1475). — There remained 
still another lord to be punished, one upon whom Louis 
had bestowed money, estates, the captaincy of Eouen, the 
government of Normandy, and, with the office of constable, 
the defence of the kingdom. This man, the Count of St. 
Pol, who had both French and Plemish fiefs, determined 
to create for himself an independent sovereignty between 
England, Prance, and Burgundy. He had worked at this 
scheme for ten years, deceiving in turn the English, the 
Burgundians, and even Louis XL Louis was therefore the 
more implacable in his resentment when, by the exchange 
of the count's letters, the three powers saw how they had 



THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 269 

been duped by him. On the approacli of the French troops, 
the constable, thinking that in spite of all he would still 
have an asylum with his old friend, the Duke of Burgundy, 
fled to Mons. But a bargain was arranged between the 
Duke of Burgundy and the king ; Louis abandoned the 
Duke of Lorraine to Charles, and the Burgundian prince 
delivered up the constable, who was transported to the 
Bastile, closely questioned, and promptly beheaded. 

Extension of the Royal Power. — The existence of France 
depended upon the realization of two things, — territorial 
unity and governmental unit}^ This twofold unity, vaguely 
appreciated, was the end of all the acts of Louis XL ; securely 
to establish the royal government by reducing the aristoc- 
racy was the main effort of his whole reign. For this he 
used every means, striking down some of the great families, 
as has been narrated, seeking to attach others to his side : 
the house of Bourbon, by giving his daughter in marriage to 
the old duke's brother and heir, Pierre de Beaujeu; the 
house of Orleans, by giving his second daughter, Jeanne, to 
Duke Louis ; the house of Anjou, by extorting from old Count 
Een6 and his nephew a will which made the king heir of 
Maine, Anjou, and Provence ; the house of Brittau}^, last and 
most endowed with vitality of all the great fiefs, by extend- 
ing his possessions as far as possible toward it, and by draw- 
ing to his court all the serviceable Bretons who would acce^^t 
his offers. 

Burgundian Succession ; the Austrian House in the Nether- 
lands. — The death of Charles the Rash had opened a ques- 
tion which was of the gravest consequence to France. As 
Charles left only a d?^ughter, what was to become of the 
Burgundian possessions ? Louis' first project was to acquire 
the whole of it by a marriage ; but several others conceived 
the same design. Five candidates for the hand of Mary 
of Burgundy appeared, among whom were the Archduke 
Maximilian of Austria, son of the Emperor Frederick III., 
and the dauphin Charles, afterward Charles VIII. This 
last marriage was an impossibility ; it would have involved 
the union of a child of eight j'ears with a princess of twenty ; 
moreover, the Flemings would never have consented to have 
a count who would at the same time be king of France, and 
therefore far too powerful for them. Louis perceived this, 
and tried to take possession outright in advance. In Picardy 
he put forward the right of reversion to the crown, stipu- 



270 THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 

lated in the treaty of Arras ; in Artois, he made use of the 
feudal right of forfeiture in punishment for misdeeds of 
Charles toward him ; in Burgundy, he made claims of feudal 
guardianship ; and everywhere he made his plans to retain 
what he took. After resuming possession of the French 
provinces, he sent his troops into the imperial and Flemish 
provinces, into Franche-Comte, Hainault, and Brabant. 

To cover his aggressions, Louis studiously fomented trou- 
bles in Flanders. The Flemings, who had been exceedingly 
ill used by Charles the Bold, had regarded his death as a 
signal deliverance. They proposed to bestow the young 
princess as they chose, and, as a first step, made her promise 
that she would be exclusively guided as ruler by the advice 
of the states of Flanders. She promised, but at the same 
time wrote to Louis XL that her two chief councillors would 
be two Burgundians, former ministers of her father. Louis 
showed this letter to the envoys of Ghent ; and the populace, 
enraged against the two councillors, demanded their death. 
The young countess begged the people, with tears in her 
eyes, to spare her two servants; but it was in vain. She 
would not forgive Louis the humiliation to which he had 
thus subjected her, and, in spite of the king of France, in 
spite of her own subjects, she bestowed her hand and her 
rich inheritance on Maximilian of Austria (1477). 

Royal marriages are now mere family events, most of 
which have little influence on the politics of nations. It was 
otherwise at the end of the fifteenth century, when states 
were made and unmade without other reason than the unions 
of their masters. Among princely marriages which deserve 
the attention of history on account of their momentous con- 
sequences, that of Maximilian of Austria and Mary of 
Burgundy takes a leading place. Their son, Philip the 
Handsome, was to marry the heiress of Castile and Aragon ; 
the possessions of Castile, Aragon, Burgundy, and Austria 
were to be united in a single hand ; and the overshadowing 
power of Charles V., the struggle of France and of Europe 
against the house of Austria, were to result. 

Battle of Guinegate (1479). — The Flemings meanwhile 
began to become indignant at the encroachments of Lotiis 
in Hainault, and decided to attack Th^rouanne. Cr^ve- 
coeur, the general of Louis XL, on his way to relieve the 
town, met Maximilian advancing with a large body of Flem- 
ish troops. Crfevecoeur had only half as much infantry. 



THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 271 

but twice as many men-at-arms. With this mass of cavalry- 
he drove Maximilian's men-at-arms from the field ; but in 
the meanwhile his own infantry was totally defeated, and 
the battle lost. Yet Maximilian gained nothing substantial. 
He could not even take Th^rouanne, and retired to Flanders, 
where a thousand difficulties awaited him, — revolts, insur- 
rections, and factious opposition. He exhausted his last re- 
sources in order to extricate himself from these difficulties, 
pawned his wife's jewels, and fell ill of chagrin. 

Treaty of Arras (1482) ; the King obtains Half the Bur- 
gundian Possessions. — For the king of France, on the other 
hand, these last years were very fruitful. Good news and 
inheritances came to him one upon another. In 1480 King 
Een6 died; in 1481, his nephew Charles ; and thus, by virtue 
of their wills, Maine, Anjou, and Provence devolved on 
Louis XI. In March, 1482, Mary of Burgundy died. She 
left two children, Philip and Margaret ; but the Flemings 
formed a council of regency, and allowed Maximilian only a 
shadow of authority. He attempted to seize and hang some 
insubordinate citizens. Thereupon the Flemings turned to 
the king of France, and offered him, for his young dauphin, 
their little princess Margaret, who would bring to him as 
dower the French provinces of the Burgundian inheritance. 
They liberally added the counties of Burgundy and Artois, 
which were not theirs ; on such a basis the treaty of Arras 
was easily concluded (December, 1482). 

The envoys of Flanders repaired to the king at his castle 
of Plessis-lez-Tours : not a castle, but a fortress ; a prison 
with iron portcullises, iron gates, drawbridges, towers, and 
soldiers. After traversing drawbridges and bastions they 
found themselves in a little chamber dimly lighted, and in 
a corner of the chamber they perceived a man almost en- 
tirely concealed in rich furs. It was Louis XI., struck with 
paralysis two years before, feeling himself dying, yet still 
filling Europe with his activity, redoubling his suspicions 
and his harshness as he grew weaker, and clinging to life 
and power with all his might. He caused the Gospel to be 
brought, upon which he was to take the oath. "If I swear 
with my left hand," said he, "you will excuse it; m.j right 
is a little weak ; " but then, reflecting that a treaty sworn 
with the left hand might some time be annulled on that 
ground, he made an effort, and touched the Gospel with his 
right elbow. 



272 THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 

Acquisitions made in tMs Reign. — Thus this dying king 
received four important provinces, — Picardy, Artois with the 
county of Boulogne, the duchy and the county of Burgundy, 
with Charolais and Auxerre. Three others, Anjou, Maine, 
and Provence, had come to him by will ; a state trial had 
brought him the duchy of Alenyon and Perche ; the death 
of his brother, Guienne ; his intervention in the affairs of 
Spain, Roussillon and Cerdana. Thus eleven provinces 
were added to the domains of the crown within a single 
reign, without reckoning the profits gained by the execution 
of St. Pol, Nemours, and Armagnac. It was an immense 
stride toward unity of territory, and a decisive blow had 
been struck at the power of the great nobles. 

Foreign Affairs. — France was on the way to regain that 
position of pre-eminence in Europe which it had so often 
occupied. Her alliance was sought for on all sides. Six 
thousand Swiss served in the king's army; Scotchmen 
formed his guard ; he was the protector of Lorenzo de' 
Medici at Plorence, of Galeazzo Sforza at Milan, of the 
young king of Navarre, the young Duke of Savoy, and the 
young Duke of Gelderland. He had the wisdom to obtain 
from these alliances only what was useful to himself. But 
if he avoided compromising foreign expeditions, he pur- 
sued eagerly those which were necessary. Mention has 
already been made of his capture of Perpignan from the 
king of Aragon, which secured to France its natural boun- 
daries. Germany, binder Frederick III., caused the king of 
France no uneasiness, nor did he fear England, as was 
shown by his revoking, by the treaty of Arras, the promise 
of marriage made in the treaty of Pecquigny. 

Last Hours of Louis XL (1483). — But the king of 
France, at the age of sixty, was dying, in spite of a thou- 
sand efforts made to hold on to life. He had pursuaded 
the king of Naples to send him St. Francis de Paul, before 
whom he cast himself upon his knees, that the saint might 
prolong his life. Sultan Bajazet, for favors received, sent 
him relics from Constantinople. The king had caused the 
sacred ampulla to be brought from Rheims, and proposed, 
it was said, to have his entire body anointed Avith its oil. 
But remedies, prayers, and eagerness to live were unavail- 
ing. "All accomplished nothing," said Comines, "and it 
needs must be that he should go where others have gone." 
Those about him, whom he had ^1 ways enjoined to announce 



THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 273- 

to him gently the approach of the end, told him bluntly that: 
he must die. Then at length he resigned himself to it, sum- 
moned the dauphin to his bedside, gave him excellent ad- 
vice, and died on the 30th of August, 1483. "Would one 
say," says Comines, " that this king did not suffer as well 
as others, who thus shut himself up and caused himself to 
be gviarded, who was thus in fear of his children and of 
all his near relatives, who changed from day to day his 
attendants and nurses, and dared not trust in any of them, 
and chained himself with so strange a chain and imprison- 
ment ? " 

New Parliaments ; Posts ; Favors to the Bourgeoisie. — 
Louis granted permanent tenure to the magistrates in 1467. 
He extended the action of the government over the remote 
provinces by the establishment of posts (1464), at first used 
only for the king's affairs and those of the Pope ; by erect- 
ing the Parliaments of Grenoble, Bordeaux, and Dijon ; and 
finally, by extending appeals to the king's court from sen- 
tences in seignorial courts. To attach the new provinces 
and keep the affections of the old, he preserved or granted 
to them provincial estates, and lent ear to their complaints. 
In order to gain over the burgesses and to find in their 
devotion an assistance against the nobles, he frequently 
authorized their assemblies and gave them free elections of 
magistrates. 

Encouragement of Commerce and Letters. — Yet when the 
burgesses, excited by increase of taxes, rose in revolt, they 
were cruelly treated ; many were hanged on trees along the 
roadsides, or cast into the river, sewn up in sacks, upon 
which Avas written, " Let the king's justice pass." All bent 
before his sovereign will, and the royal power came from his 
hands blood-stained, but feared by the nobles because of his 
strength, and respected by the people because it guaranteed 
public peace and security of roads, and because it already 
occupied itself with the great interests of modern socie- 
ties, commerce and industry. The king built great works 
of fortification. He improved the highways, and summoned 
to court the ablest merchants to advise concerning means 
to further the prosperity of industries and commerce ; he 
multiplied fairs and markets and attracted to them the 
merchants of the Netherlands, Savoy, and other neighboring 
countries by special privileges, and wrote to the sultan of 
Egypt to recommend to him the French who traded with 



274 THE REIGN OF LOUIS XL 

that country. Workmen from Venice, Genoa, and Florence 
established at Tours the first manufactures of silks. He 
encouraged mining industries. For the benefit of commerce 
he tried to bring about unity of laws and of weights and 
measures. What he proposed was not a simple compilation 
of the coutumes, but a labor of legislation ; for he caused 
the laws of foreign countries, especially those of Venice and 
Florence, to be brought together and studied for helpful 
comparison. 

We ought also to set down to the credit of the king, him- 
self a man of letters, his encouragement of learning (the 
foundation or reorganization of the universities of Valence, 
Bourges, and Besan9on, and of several schools of law and 
medicine, etc.) and the favor with Avhich he supported the 
recent invention of printing. The famous poet Villon was 
of his time; Comines, his counsellor, still remains one of 
the great historians of France, an observant, acute, and 
thoughtful historian of subtle political intrigues. 

Character of Louis XI. — Louis XI. contributed more than 
any one else to establish the French monarchy, and is in 
certain respects the representative of the new spirit in 
politics. For by giving no recognition to birth and all to 
merit, he secured to intellect the place Avhich it occupies 
in modern governments. Unfortunately, in his schemes 
intellect only too often took the form of stratagem and 
perfidy. Louis undertook to secure the preponderance of 
general interests over individual interests ; but he gave an 
appearance of personal vengeance to measures of severity 
which the good of France demanded. His task Avas to 
destroy feudal society, a society Avhich had outlived its time 
though still tenacious, and which must either give place or 
perish if it persisted in efforts to maintain itself. It per- 
sisted, fought, and perished ; but the battle was conducted 
in such a manner that pity was felt for the conquered, and 
men forgot the duties of the victor ; that is, the obligation 
under which royalty lay, at length to give unity, peace and 
order to the country. This duty Louis XL fulfilled, but 
too often through violations of moral law. France certainly 
owes much to him, but he cannot be absolved from the 
charge of having treated all means as good Avhich served 
his turn. 



THE REIGN' OF CHARLES VIII. 275 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE REIGN OF CHARLES VIII. 
(1483-1491 A.D.) 

The Royal Family. — Charles VIII., then thirteen years 
and two months old, was the youngest of the children of 
the deceased king. He was weak in physique and of a 
character hardly more robust. His father, caring little for 
a child who was sickly and of slight intelligence, kept him 
remote from the court, at Amboise. This feeble prince was 
king of France in full possession of authority ; for the law 
fixed the majority of kings at the attainment of thirteen 
years. But this legal fiction deceived no one. It was well 
known that authority was entirely in the hands of his sister 
Anne, a princess of twenty-two years, who had married 
Pierre de Beaujeu, a younger son of the great house of 
Bourbon. Anne had in her favor neither the will of her 
father, nor the affection of her brother, nor the laws of the 
kingdom, nor the benefits of experience ; but simply the 
advantage of possessing many of the qualities of Louis XI. 
Louis, who had said of her, " She is the least a fool of all 
women, for wise one there is none," had confided to her the 
young king's education and health. Jeanne, the younger 
daughter of Louis XL, was small, thin, ill-favored, hunch- 
backed, and so ugly that her father could not endure to see 
her. Married in 1476 to Louis of Orleans, she had not 
found in that union, which Avas simply a pledge of mutual 
reconciliation, more happiness than in her own family. 

Her husband, Louis of Orleans, first prince of the blood, 
twenty-one years old, was entirely engrossed with gallantry, 
festivals, and tournaments. A man of pleasure more than 
of politics, he would have contented himself Avith being 
regarded as the model of knights but for his two young 
cousins, the counts of Angouleme and Dunois, who urged him 
forward. The old Duke of Bourbon, elder brother of the 
Sire de Beaujeu, also had his designs. The princely aris- 
tocracy was, it was thought, to take the upper hand ; the 



276 THE REIGN OF CHARLES VIII. 

time of kings had passed, the time of princes and great 
nobles had returned. 

Aristocratic Reaction. — Princes and nobles began their 
work without delay. Ofiices, enormous estates, and pen- 
sions were assigned to the Duke of Orleans, the Count of 
Dunois, the Count of Angouleme, the Duke of Lorraine, 
and the Duke of Bourbon ; and the king was disarmed by 
the dismissal of the six thousand Swiss whom Louis had 
had in his service. Vengeance was satisfied, as well as 
avarice. An ordinance revoked all alienations of the do- 
main effected by Louis XL One by one his "evil coun- 
sellors " were taken and punished. His former enemies, 
on the other hand, were restored and rewarded. Those 
Avhom he had punished, John of Armagnac, traitor and 
murderer, Jacques of Nemours, ten times a traitor and per- 
jurer toward State and king, were transformed into innocent 
victims. The brother of the one, the children of the other, 
laid claim to rehabilitation, and especially to restitution. 

That the counter-revolution might be complete, it would 
have been necessary that government should have passed 
entirely into the hands of princes ; but the aristocracy had 
lost the courage to maintain its former high pretensions. 
It referred the question of sovereignty to the States-Gen- 
eral, convoked in January, 1484. The Duke of Orleans did 
not doubt that they would aid him to supplant his sister-in- 
law, and Anne counted confidently on using them to check 
all these budding ambitions. 

States-General of 1484. — These States-General were in 
reality the first of French national assemblies. All the 
provinces of France sent deputies. Each order sent its 
own representatives, elected in local assemblies, in which 
even the peasants took part ; so that the States of 1484 
marked the entrance of the rural population upon public 
life, as those of 1302 had brought in the urban population ; 
they marked the final union of burgesses and peasants. The 
formation of the Third Estate was now being effected. It 
is noteworthy that in the Assembly the deputies did not 
divide themselves, or vote in separate orders, but in six sec- 
tions, corresponding to six great territorial regions. Finally 
no assembly, unless that which was directed by Marcel, 
asserted more vigorously the rights of the nation at large. 

On the 15th of January the royal session took place in the 
great hall of the archbishop's palace. The young king sat 



THE REIGN OF CHARLES VIII. 277 

upon the throne. At his right, at some distance, sat the 
constable ; at his left, the chancellor. Between them and 
the throne stood four great lords ; while behind were seated 
two cardinals, six ecclesiastical peers, and six princes of the 
blood or lay peers, behind whom stood some twenty lords. 
Facing the king, on a little lower level, the deputies of the 
nation were ranged upon two semi-circular benches, the 
bishops, barons, and knights iipon the first, the other depu- 
ties upon the second. The chancellor, in a long harangue, 
expressed the young king's desire to know his subjects and 
be known by them, announced the economy in expenses 
which he had prescribed, the reforms begun and proposed, 
his intention to provide for his personal expenses by means 
of the revenues of his own domain, and his need to resort 
to the estates for the expenses which the security of the 
kingdom required. Next day the estates formed their six 
sections or nations of France, Burgundy, Normandy, Aqui- 
taine, Languedoc, and Provence. They chose as their presi- 
dent the abbot of St. Denis, first deputy of Paris, and set 
to work to prepare their cahiers, or lists of grievances. At 
the beginning of February this work was finished, and dis- 
cussion began. 

A grave question first arose : that of the guardianship 
and education of the king. Some deputies advanced the 
view that the national assembly had no right to discuss the 
guardianship or regency ; that by the very nature of a mo- 
narchical government, power devolved upon the royal fam- 
ily ; that if the king was unable to exercise it himself the 
princes of the blood of right took his place. This opinion 
found an eloquent opponent in Philippe Pot, Lord of La 
Eoche, deputy for the noblesse of Burgundy, who made a 
speech of singular boldness, in which he urged the exces- 
sive numbers and discordant ambitions of the princes of the 
blood, and declared that there was a superior and sovereign 
authority in whom resided the power, and which alone could 
delegate it ; namely, — the authority of the people, or the 
States-General composed of its deputies. He reminded them 
also that, in the beginning, the sovereign people had set up 
kings by its elective vote, and that the nation as a whole 
had the deepest interest in the question who should govern 
it. The states were therefore, according to the orator, the 
depositories of supreme power ; nothing ought to be done 
without their advice or consent : and he reminded them 



278 THE REIGN OF CHARLES VIIL 

tliat this authority had already been fully exercised under 
Philip IV. and his sons, at the accession of Philip of 
Valois, and during the regency of Charles V. This discus- 
sion was interrupted by a royal session in which Jean de 
Rely, canon and deputy of Paris, after a long harangue to 
the king, began to read the cahiers of grievances. 

Organization of the New Government. — Next the dep- 
uties attempted the nomination of the members of the 
council; but finally they referred all to the king, merely 
recommending him to listen to the advice of his council, in 
which twelve deputies of the estates should have seats. In 
the absence of the king, the Duke of Orleans was to preside 
over this council ; in his absence, the Duke of Bourbon, then' 
the Sire de Beaujeu. The Duke of Orleans remained nom- 
inally at the head of the government, but the Dame de 
Beaujeu, who had accustomed her brother to obey and fear 
her, by causing him to preside over the council pushed 
aside the Duke of Orleans, and by causing it to be presided 
over by her husband, a simple baron of Beaujeu, she ex- 
cluded from it the Duke of Alengon and the other princes 
of the blood, who, more highly qualified by rank, would 
not sit below him. So, without any one's having foreseen 
it, was constituted the government of Madame, so called, 
which was to continue the firm and energetic administra- 
tion of Louis XI. 

Situation of the Kingdom according to the Cahiers. — 
The cahiers of the estates show us what was at that time 
the situation of the kingdom. The caliier of the Church 
demanded that the king should be crowned at once, and 
that he should re-establish the liberties of the Church as 
defined by the councils of Constance and Basel, and secured 
by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. That of the nobility 
claimed indemnities for privileges which had been taken 
away by Louis XL The cahier of the Third Estate de- 
clared the extreme misery to which the people had been 
reduced by the intolerable weight of the taxes, by the 
exactions of the court of Rome, and by those of the 
soldiers, who, ceaselessly marching from province to prov- 
ince and quartered upon the laborer, subjected him to 
every sort of exaction. The deputies of Anjou, Maine, and 
the district of Chartres declared that in their provinces 
more than five hundred persons had been put to death 
within the last fcAV years on pretext of having engaged 



THE REIGN OF CHARLES VIIL 279 

in contraband dealings in salt. To remedy these evils, 
the States desired that the pensions granted to the lords 
should be suppressed or greatly reduced; that the king 
should reduce his military forces to the number kept up 
by Charles VII., and should oblige them to observe the 
ordinances ; that taxes should not be imposed or exacted 
without first assembling the States and declaring the causes 
and the necessities of the king and kingdom. The States 
also demanded the abolition of the practice of selling judi- 
cial offices, the fixing of judicial costs on a moderate scale ; 
and finally, to accomplish all these useful reforms and to 
maintain good order, that the States of the kingdom should 
be convoked every two years. 

Dissolution of the Assembly. — Unable to obtain any but 
falsified financial accounts, they finally granted to the 
king, for two years, the same taille which the kingdom had 
paid Charles VII. From that time their deliberations de- 
generated into disputes, often shameful disputes, between 
the provinces, each eager to escape its part of the common 
burdens. The discussions respecting the pay due to the 
deputies, contributed still more to discredit them. The 
assembly having been dissolved on the 15th of March, 
1484, favorable replies to its cahiers were made in the 
king's name. But no ordinance of reform was published, 
and so nothing was changed in the government. 

First Revolt of the Duke of Orleans (1485-1486). — The 
Duke of Orleans, by his fine presence, his chivalrous 
manners, and his taste for pleasure and dissipation, gained 
an influence over the young king, his brother-in-laAv, which 
soon caused Anne of Beaujeu much uneasiness. Hearing 
of secret plots of the princes against her authority, she at 
once sent troops to Paris to arrest the Duke of Orleans. 
The duke narrowly escaped capture. Declared a rebel, he 
drew over to his cause Duke Francis II. of Brittany, made 
an alliance with Maximilian, chagrined at the concessions 
of the treaty of Arras, and even requested the assistance 
of King Richard III. of England. 

Anne of Beaujeu defeated all these plans. She kept Rich- 
ard III. in his kingdom by aiding his rival, Henry of Rich- 
mond, who soon became King Henry VII. of England, She 
intrigued with the estates of Flanders against Maximilian ; 
and made alliance with the nobles of Brittany against Fran- 
cis II. The Duke of Orleans was captured, and compelled 



280 THE REIGN OF CHARLES VIII. 

to return to the court and to promise to occupy himself 
henceforward with his pleasures only. 

The "Foolish War"; Battle of St. Aubin du Cormier 
(1486-1488). — But Maximilian, who some months before 
had been chosen king of the Romans, that is, heir of the 
imperial crown, broke the treaty of Arras. The league of 
the princes was formed anew ; a League of the Public Weal, 
like that of twenty years before. Anne had not committed 
the faults of Louis XI. ; she had more resources remaining, 
and used them with alaility. Maximilian was checked in 
Artois (1487). The young king, set at the head of a de- 
voted army, marched against the confederates of the south- 
ern provinces. Everywhere the burgesses took arms against 
the lords and the garrisons. In a few days all troubles in 
the south were quieted ; Anne then turned toward Brittany. 
La Tr^mouille entered it with French troops in April, 
1488. In July, near St. Aubin du Cormier, he totally de- 
feated the Breton army. Three or four thousand were slain 
in the battle, and the number of prisoners was equally great. 
The Duke of Orleans and the Prince of Orange were cap- 
tured, and the ruin of their cause was complete. The two 
princes were conducted into France under guard and impris- 
oned. The duke, heir presumptive of the crown though he 
was, remained for three years in the great tower of Bourges. 

Operations in the north went on with equal success. The 
Flemings, incited against Maximilian, drove his German 
troops from their country and compelled him to yield. So 
the Dame de Beaujeu defeated all coalitions and kept the 
conquests of her father : she Avas to add to them one great 
province more. After a little fighting in Brittany, negotia- 
tions were entered into. A treaty was signed at Sabl6 in 
August, 1488. The Duke of Brittany engaged to banish 
all the king's enemies from his estates and to give them no 
more aid. He also promised not to marry his daughters 
without the advice and consent of the king. The estates of 
the province signed a bond of 200,000 gold crowns to 
guarantee these promises, and the French kept as a pledge 
four strong places. 

Marriage of Charles VIII. with Anne of Brittany ; Acqui- 
sition of Brittany (1491). — Three weeks after the treaty of 
Sabl6 Duke Francis 11. died. The marriage of his daughter 
Anne (the other died soon) became a question of European 
politics : should Brittany, the last of the great hef s, be 



THE REIGN OF CHARLES VIIL 281 

united to the domains of the king of France, or should it 
not ? The sovereigns of Europe took the liveliest interest 
in the independence of the province. Henry VII. promised 
troops and money; Ferdinand of Aragon sent both. The 
suitors for the hand of the young princess were numerous, 
and among them was the Emperor Maximilian. Had he suc- 
ceeded, he would have menaced the independence of France 
on three frontiers. Fortunately, while his ambassador 
was contracting the marriage by proxy for him in Brittany, 
the king of France, under the able guidance of his sister, 
was more active and so more fortunate. French troops 
already occupied a large part of the province ; in August, 
1491, they undertook the siege of Eennes. At the begin- 
ning of October the king himself approached. When the 
secret negotiations had arrived at the proper point, the 
king made pretext of a pilgrimage to Our Lady near Eennes, 
and his devotions accomplished, entered the town and held 
a long conference with the duchess. Three days later he 
was betrothed to her. The marriage took place at Langeais 
in Touraine, in December, 1491. The king, then twenty- 
one years of age, and the duchess, then forty, made mutual 
cession of all their titles and claims to the duchy of Brit- 
tany ; under this reservation, however, that if the duchess 
should survive the king and should have no children by 
him, she should not enter into any other marriage save Avith 
the future king, if it were possible, or with the heir pre- 
sumptive of the crown. This marriage was the last act of 
Madame de Beaujeu. After having governed the kingdom 
for eight years with masculine ability, she returned, simply 
and without effort, to her duties as a wife, and confined her- 
self to them until she died in 1522. 

The marriage of Charles VIIL to the Duchess Anne 
brought under the royal authority the last refuge of princely 
independence. The province which had longest and most 
obstinately maintained its individuality became fused like 
the rest into the one great whole, the kingdom of France. 
Princes would never again be able to raise their standards 
against the king. Yet though the aristocracy was con- 
quered, and in part despoiled, its spirit, its tastes, and its 
tendencies remained, and indeed exerted a strong influence 
upon royalty itself. The crown abandoned the bourgeois 
and popular fashions which it had more than once assumed 
and which had stood it in so good stead under Philip the 



282 THE REIGN OF CHARLES VIII. 

Fair and Charles the Wise, Charles the Well-Served and 
Louis XI. Seduced by the glorious bubble of Italian con- 
quest, it was to assume the sword and lance of chivalry, 
to enter upon the path of war and conquest in imitation 
of the paladins of Charlemagne and the preux chevaliers, 
and, under Charles VIII., to go forth itself for the con- 
quest of the kingdom of Naples, and to dream of that of 
Constantinople and of Jerusalem. 



NINTH PERIOD. 

Italian Wars (1494-1515). 
CHAPTER XXXVII. 

FIRST ITALIAN WAR. 
(1494-1498 A.D.) 

Italy in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century. — At 

the time when the French monarchy was absorbing the last 
of the great fiefs, the Italian peninsula still presented all 
varieties of government, — monarchy in the south, theocracy 
in the centre, republics and principalities in the north. In 
that country, with its rich but corrupt civilization, the mar- 
vellous developments of the arts but imperfectly concealed 
a premature decline, and the brilliancy of literature did not 
keep from view the degeneracy of character. Wars were 
carried on only by means of mercenary condottieri. The 
loss of the military virtues is a fatal sign in any nation. 
Stratagems, perfidy, and falsehood were held in honor. 
Political difficulties were resolved by poison or the dagger. 
Italian diplomacy was a school of crime. 

The Holy See and the States of the Church were in the 
hands of the infamous Pope Alexander VI. (Borgia). At 
Naples, King Ferdinand was universally detested. At Flor- 
ence, Piero de' Medici made his despotism felt more than 
that of his illustrious predecessors, Cosmo and Lorenzo, had 
been. At Milan, Ludovico Sforza (il Moro) was plotting 
to displace his young nephew Galeazzo. Venice seemed at 
the height of her power, but Genoa was in a perpetual state 
of revolution. The glorious democracies of the fourteenth 
century had become changed into narrow oligarchies. Des- 



284 FIRST ITALIAN WAR. 

potism had taken the place of the ancient liberty. Italy, 
filled with wealth, but delivered over to anarchy, was a prey 
reserved for the first who should dare to seize it. Charles 
VIII. resolved to make the attempt. 

Imprudence of Charles VIII. — Louis XI. had been care- 
ful not to assert those claims to the kingdom of Naples 
which he derived from the house of Anjou. Charles VIII. 
Tcvived them, in order to set forth and achieve great things 
with the sword beyond the mountains. Anne of Beaujeu 
vainly attempted to make him listen to the counsels of wis- 
dom. All the old politicians gave the same advice ; but the 
king refused to listen. He was eager for novelty, for a 
brilliant and glorious expedition after the fashion of the 
paladins of Charlemagne. The impulsive ardor of the 
nobility carried all before it. Moreover, Italy herself ap- 
pealed to France. Ludovico, threatened by the king of 
Naples, invoked the aid of Charles VIII. ; others, too, in- 
voked him, — the Marquis of Saluzzo, the Neapolitan barons 
exasperated against their king, Savonarola, and the cardi- 
nals who were the enemies of Alexander VI. 

Yet, taking into consideration the situation of France, 
the moment was ill chosen for a remote expedition; the 
neighboring powers, disturbed by the acquisition of Brit- 
tany, were forming a new league. Henry VII. was landing 
an English army at Calais ; Maximilian was attacking 
Artois ; Ferdinand of Aragon was undertaking to cross the 
Pyrenees. Charles entered into negotiations with the 
avaricious Henry VII., who, on promise of 745,000 crowns 
of gold, payable in fifteen years, returned to England ; with 
Ferdinand the Catholic, to whom Cerdana and Koussillon 
were restored ; with Maximilian, who recovered for his son 
Artois, Franche-Comte, and Charolais, conqiiests of Louis 
XI. All these were frontiers essential to the defence of 
the kingdom. But what mattered it to Charles VIII. ? 
The submission of Italy was certain, and this conquest was 
only the beginning of a still more glorious fortune. From 
Naples he hoped to cross over into Greece, to drive the 
Turks from Constantinople, and to recover the Holy Sep- 
ulchre. Thus began those hazardous expeditions which 
diverted France from internal improvement and from acqui- 
sitions more certainly within its reach. 

Conquest and Loss of the Kingdom of Naples ; Battle of 
Fornovo. — A fine army assembled with eager promptness, 



FIRST ITALIAN WAR. 285 

in August, 1494, at the foot of the Alps. It consisted of 
3600 lances, 6000 Breton archers, a similar number of cross- 
bowmen, 8000 Gascon arquebusiers, 8000 Swiss pikemen ; 
in all 50,000 men, with 140 large cannon, and a multitude 
of small pieces ; " a gallant company, but little inclined to 
obedience." Many things necessary for so great an enter- 
prise were lacking; neither provisions nor wagons nor 
ready money had been accumulated. 

The king of Naples had sent his brother with a fleet 
along the coast by Genoa, and his son with an army toward 
the Apennines, to guard the approaches by sea and land. 
The Duke of Orleans gathered together a few vessels at 
Marseilles and defeated the former at Rapallo ; the latter 
thereupon retreated. Fear seized upon the entire penin- 
su.la. The memory of the barbarian invasions was renewed ;, 
it was already too late to send back the foreigner whom 
they had summoned. 

Charles VIII. had crossed Mont Gen^vre on the 2d of 
September. He found himself short of money at the very 
beginning of the campaign. At Genoa he borrowed one 
hundred thousand francs, at a rate which, counting every- 
thing, amounted to 42 per cent. At Asti he was joined by 
Ludovico il Moro. Ludovico was in great fear of the Nea- 
politans ; he conducted the conqueror across the duchy 
of Milan to the frontiers of Tuscany. His nephew died a 
little while afterward; it was believed that by assisting the 
king he had purchased the right to poison his nephew, and 
to take his place. Piero de' Medici opened his frontier 
fortresses to Charles, in the hope of being supported in 
Florence, which a Dominican monk, Savonarola, was incit- 
ing to insurrection against him ; but he was quickly driven 
out by the people on his return. The monk-tribime, who 
regarded Charles VIII. as an envoy of God to scourge Italy, 
went out to meet the young king, and brought him into the 
city, which Charles entered as a conqueror. 

At Rome the cardinals and nobles opened the gates to 
the French as to liberators, and urged the king to depose 
the Pope. Charles VIII. took the Pope's son, Csesar Borgia,' 
as hostage of the Pope's fidelity, but Caesar escaped a few 
days later. Naples fell without a blow. Ferdinand I. had 
just died : his son Alfonzo II. had abdicated in terror. The 
new sovereign, Ferdinand IL, attempting to fight at San 
Germano, found himself involved in the midst of treasons 



286 FIRST ITALIAN WAR. 

and fled to Sicily. Charles VIII. and his troops entered 
Naples (February, 1495), the inhabitants strewing flowers 
before him. The noise of this rapid conquest crossed the 
sea, and already the Greeks were preparing for war, expect- 
ing their liberator, " the great king of the Franks." 

Meanwhile the conquerors were thinking of nothing but 
of enjoying their easy victory. Charles VIII. had himself 
crowned king of ISTaples, emperor of the East, and king of 
Jerusalem. He showed himself to the Neapolitans in im- 
perial garb, and '^celebrated many fine tourneys and pas- 
times." Suddenly he learned that a formidable league of 
the sovereigns of Europe had been concluded against him, 
with the intention of cutting off his retreat from Italy and 
reducing France to its former limits. Ferdinand the Cath- 
olic, Maximilian, and Henry VII. were the instigators of it. 
The Italians themselves, who had summoned the French 
or promised them fidelity, Ludovico il Moro, Alexander 
VI., Venice, etc., joined it. Promptness was necessary. 
Charles left four thousand men at Naples and marched with 
the rest to the Apennines. After crossing that chain with 
great difficulty, the French discovered the army of the allies, 
thirty-five thousand strong, barring their road. They them- 
selves numbered fewer than ten thousand. Nevertheless, 
Charles resolved to make his way through. He faced his 
assailants. In an hour thirty-five hundred of them lay upon 
the field, and the rest had dispersed. This victory of For- 
novo secured the retreat of the French (July, 1495) . 

On returning to France Charles appeared to forget Italy. 
Ferdinand II. set oiit from Sicily with a few Spanish troops, 
surprised Naples, and expelled the French. The French domi- 
nation in the kingdom of Naples had fallen as quickly as it 
had risen, and amid the same demonstrations of joy on the 
part of the inhabitants. 

Death of Charles VIII. (1498). — Warned by experience 
and the complaints of his people, the young king, says Com- 
ines, " set his imagination to desire to live according to the 
commandments of God ; to put justice and the Church in 
good order, and also to arrange his finances, so that he did 
not raise from his people more than 1,200,000 francs 
by way of taxation, in addition to his domain, from the 
proceeds of which he desired to live, as in ancient times 
the kings did." In April, 1498, passing through a dark 



FIRST ITALIAN WAR. 287 

gallery in the clid,teau of Amboise, he struck his head 
against the top of a doorway so violently that he died a 
few hours afterward, at the age of twenty-eight. The di- 
rect line of the Valois became extinct with him, and was 
replaced by that of the Valois-Orleans. 



288 LOUIS xiL 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

LOUIS XII. 
(1498-1515 A.D.) 

Louis XII. — Charles VIII. leaving no children, the crown 
reverted by right to Duke Louis of Orleans, then thirty-six 
years old, grandson of a brother of Charles VI. Louis' 
grandfather had been a brilliant knight, his father a grace- 
ful poet, his uncle Dunois the bravest of the captains of 
Charles VII. Louis, though without superior qualities, 
was a man of much kindly geniality. He began his reign 
by the reduction of taxation, and refused the dues customary 
on the accession of a monarch. Though formerly the leader 
of the nobility against the royal authority, he retained no 
ill feeling toward those who had faithfully served Anne of 
Beaujeu against him, saying that it did not become the king 
of France to take revenge for the injuries of the Duke of 
Orleans. 

A serious matter first occupied his attention. The widow 
of Charles VIII., Queen Anne, had retired to Brittany, and 
might by a second marriage carry that province to a foreign 
house. Louis, who had been for twenty-two years married 
to a daughter of Louis XL, whom he did not love, asked for 
a divorce. Pope Alexander granted it, and Louis immedi- 
ately married the widow of his predecessor. Brittany was 
thus again united to France (1499), this time permanently. 
The easy success of the first Italian expedition then revived 
the taste for distant adventures. Louis XII. not only in- 
herited the claims of Charles VIII. to Naples, but had also 
received from his grandmother, Valentina Visconti, claims 
to the Milanese, which had been usurped by the Sforzas. 

Conquests of the Milanese (1499-1500) . — Before attempt- 
ing this conquest, Louis renewed the treaties made by Charles 
VIII. with his neighbors, and sought allies in Italy. The 
Duke of Savoy gave him passage across the Alps and en- 
gaged to follow him with his troops. Venice, Florence, and 
the Pope were won over. Ludovico was isolated. Trivul- 



LOUIS XII. 289 

zio, the general of Louis XII., needed only to present him- 
self in the Milanese at the head of nine thousand horsemen 
and thirteen thousand foot-soldiers. Ludovico fled into the 
Tyrol, and the French entered Milan (October, 1499). 

The maladministration of Trivulzio revived the chances 
of Ludovico. He returned with a body of Swiss or German 
adventurers, and surprised Milan (February). But a new 
French army descended from the Alps, and encountered the 
troops of Ludovico, near Novara (April, 1500). The Swiss, 
who formed the principal strength of both armies, preferred 
to give up Ludovico rather than to light against each other. 
The duke was captured, sent to France, and imprisoned 
during the rest of his life. Two of his sons succeeded in 
reaching Germany. The lesson which Louis XII. received 
was not lost. Cardinal George of Amboise, whom he en- 
trusted with the reorganization of his conquest, treated the 
people of Milan kindly, set up in their capital a sort of 
Parliament which gave the country impartial justice, and 
provided a prudent and firm administration. 

Partition of the Kingdom of Naples (1500-1501). — The 
Milanese conquered, Louis turned his thoughts to Naples. 
Instead of repeating the adventurous expedition of his 
predecessor, he entered rather upon a diplomatic campaign. 
He first assured himself of the neutrality or assistance of 
Central Italy by alliance with the Florentines and Caesar 
Borgia. France thus obtained a preponderant influence in 
the north and centre of Italy. Louis next, in order to 
obtain the kingdom of Naples without striking a blow, 
plotted to share it in advance with Ferdinand the Catholic. 
All began well. The unfortunate king of Naples, at that 
time Frederick III., a popular prince, had confidingly opened 
his fortresses to the general of the king of Spain, Gonsalvo 
de Cordova. When he asked Spain for assistance against 
the French, who were already upon the frontier (June, 
1501), he perceived that he was betrayed. He delivered 
Naples and Castelnovo into the hands of the French, retired 
first to the island of Ischia, then placed himself in the 
hands of Louis XII., who gave him a pension of thirty thou- 
sand livres and the county of Maine, where he died in 1504. 

Hostilities at Naples between the Spaniards and the 
French (1502). — The conquest completed, the partition 
was not effected so amicably. The Spaniards and the 
French fell to blows. The French viceroy, the Duke of 



290 LOUIS XII. 

Nemours, wlio liad a considerable force present, promptly 
shut up his adversary, Gonsalvo, in the town of Barletta 
(1502). The crafty Ferdinand, by treacherous pretence of 
truce, succeeded in reinforcing Gonsalvo. Nemours failed 
to press operations. Gonsalvo was relieved ; and the best 
lieutenant of the viceroy was defeated at Seminara (April, 
1503) . Nemours himself, imprudently attacking his enemy 
near Cerignola (April), was defeated and killed. Venusia 
and Gaeta alone remained in the hands of the French. 

Loss of the Kingdom of Naples (1503). — Louis XII. 
made great preparations to avenge this treason. He sent 
over the Pyrenees two armies, which failed of success, and 
over the Alps a third, which had no better fortune. Gon- 
salvo de Cordova had time to put himself in a state of de- 
fence. Posted upon tht Garigliano, he stopped the French, 
and inflicted upon them a disastrous defeat, redeemed only 
by the devotion of the celebrated Chevalier Bayard, who 
alone defended a bridge of the Garigliano. 

Treaty of Blois (1504) . — There was danger that the loss 
of the Milanese should follow that of the kingdom of 
Naples. Maximilian was already preparing to assert his 
imperial rights beyond the Alps, and Gonsalvo de Cordova 
was marching toward the northern part of the peninsula. 
Louis XII. divided and disarmed his enemies by three trea- 
ties, signed at Blois on the same day (1504). By the first 
Louis and Maximilian agreed to attack Venice, and to divide 
the spoil ; by the second Louis promised the king of the 
Eomans two hundred thousand francs in return for the 
investiture of the Milanese; by the third he renounced 
the kingdom of Naples in favor of Maximilian's grandson 
Charles, who was to marry Claude, daughter of Louis XII., . 
and receive as her dowry three French provinces, — Bur- 
gundy, Brittany, and Blois. A more disastrous agreement 
could not have been made. Charles was to obtain by 
inheritance from his father, Philip the Handsome, the 
Netherlands ; from his mother, Castile ; from his paternal 
grandfather, Austria; from his maternal grandfather, Ara- 
gon. And now he was assured- of Italy, and France was to 
be dismembered for him. This was virtually giving him 
the empire of Europe. France protested, and Louis XII. 
seized the first occasion to respond to her wishes. 

Rupture of the Treaties of Blois. — He found it in 1505, 
when Ferdinand the Catholic married Germaine de Foix, 



LOUIS XII. 2^1 

niece of Louis XII. Louis by treaty made a second cession 
of Ms rights over the kingdom of IS'aples to his niece, thus 
breaking one of the principal conditions of his treaty with 
Maximilian. He convoked the States-General at Tours in 
order openly to break the others (1506). The Assembly 
declared that the fundamental law of the state did not per- 
mit alienations of the domains of the crown, and besought 
the king to give his daughter in marriage to his heir pre- 
sumptive, Erancis, Duke of Angouleme, in order to insure 
the integrity of the territory and the independence of France. 
Louis XII. found little difficulty in acceding to their request. 
Maximilian and Ferdinand were at the time unable to pro- 
test. Louis was even able the next year, without opposi- 
tion, to reduce to obedience the revolted city of Genoa. 
Genoa was taken, its charter of liberties was burned by the 
hangman; and the city, with the islands of Corsica and 
Chios, was united to the royal domain (1507). 

League of Cambrai (1508). — The republic of Venice had 
alone gained amid the misfortunes of the peninsula, but now 
all the powers turned against her. Not only did they envy 
Venice her wealth, her one thousand vessels, her thirty 
thousand sailors ; but each one of her neighbors had some 
complaint to make against her. Louis, Ferdinand, Pope 
Julius II., Maximilian, all claimed portions of her Italian 
possessions. All these formed at Cambrai (1508) a coali- 
tion against the republic. The soul of the league was Pope 
Julius II., a fiery old man, who proposed to himself two 
aims, — to reconstitute the temj)oral power of the Papacy 
and to drive the '' barbarians " out of Italy. In 1509 he pro- 
claimed an interdict against Venice, her magistrates, her 
citizens, and her defenders. 

Victory of Agnadello (1509). — Louis XII. was the first 
to be ready. He crossed the Adda at the head of more 
than twenty thousand foot-soldiers and two thousand three 
hundred lances, and attacked the Venetian forces at Agna- 
dello in May. After a severe struggle the French were vic- 
torious. Their victory opened the whole land to them up 
to the lagoons. No place resisted them. The republic 
saved itself by a wise policy. It withdrew its troops from 
all its towns on the mainland, and, unapproachable in the 
midst of the sea, waited until discord should break out 
among the allies, which soon happened. 

The Holy League (1511). — Pope Julius 11. had achieved 



292 LOUIS XII. 

his first end. The towns of the Eomagna were restored to 
his possession. He now set about the second, — the expul- 
sion of the barbarians, — and, without scruples respecting his 
last alliance, proposed to begin with the French. In 1501 he 
granted absolution to the republic of Venice. He had little 
difiiculty in detaching from the league of Cambrai King 
Ferdinand, who had already derived from it all the advan- 
tages which he had expected. He brought over Maximilian 
and the Swiss. The allies of France were attacked. Louis 
XII. hesitated to attack the head of Christendom. The 
clergy of France, assembled at Tours, far from sharing the 
king's hesitation, granted him a large subsidy, and declared 
void all papal excommunications of him and his kingdom, 
contending that the war was not made against the pontiff, 
but against the sovereign of the Eoman states. Attacked as 
a prince, Julius II. defended himself like a soldier ; but a 
revolt of Bologna and a defeat compelled him to retire to 
Rome. Louis XII. convoked a general council at Pisa, to 
examine the conduct of the Pope and have him deposed. 
This was a serious misstep, for behind the defeated tem- 
poral prince was found the all-powerful spiritual prince. 
Julius II. laid the town of Pisa under an interdict, excom- 
municated the dissident cardinals, assembled another coun- 
cil at the Lateran, and invoked the aid of the Catholic 
powers of Europe. All responded. Ferdinand of Spain, 
King Henry VIII. of England, Maximilian, the republic of 
Venice, and the Swiss formed a Holy League (October, 
1611), with the avowed object of preserving the Church 
from a schism, but in reality to drive the French back be- 
yond the Alps (1511-1512). 

Gaston de Foix. — The Spanish general, Eamon de Car- 
dona, joined the papal troops with twelve thousand men. 
The Venetians gradually regained their lost towns. Ten 
thousand Swiss descended from their mountains. Treason 
was used upon the German troops and garrisons still in the 
service of Louis XII. in Italy, while the frontiers of France 
itself were threatened on the north, the east, and the south. 
A young and heroic general, a nephew of the king, for a 
moment dissipated all these dangers. Gaston de Foix, at 
the age of twenty-two, took command of the army of Italy. 
He hurled back the Swiss into their mountains, relieved 
Bologna, hard pressed by the Spanish and papal troops, 
took Brescia from the Venetians, and in April, 1512, ap- 



LOUIS XII. 293 

peared before Eavenna, and boldly encamped between the 
town and the camp of Cardona. After some vain attempts 
upon the town, Gaston turned against the camp of the en- 
emy and routed the papal troops ; but in driving back the 
Spanish infantry he was mortally wounded. 

Loss of Italy. — With the young and valiant general fell 
all the vigor of the French army. La Palice succeeded him. 
Julius II. regained courage, and pronounced a sentence of 
excommunication against Louis XII. The French army 
retreated before Cardona, allowed Bologna to be recaptured, 
and found in its rear twenty thousand Swiss, who had just 
reinstated Maximilian Sforza, son of Ludovico il Moro, in 
the duchy of Milan. La Palice retired into Piedmont. At 
this point Julius II. died (February, 1613). He had suc- 
ceeded in driving the French from Italy, but he was secur- 
ing it to the Spaniards : this was but changing masters, and 
passing from bad to worse. His successor Leo X., of the 
house of Medici, continued his policy. He cemented anew 
the Holy League, and a direct invasion of French territory 
was resolved upon. 

Novara ; Battle of the Spurs ; Invasion of France (1513) . 
— Ferdinand, already master of Spanish Navarre, on the 
south of the Pyrenees, was only waiting for a favorable op- 
portunity to seize upon French Navarre, on the north slope 
of these mountains, and an English army stood ready to land 
at Calais. Though threatened in his own kingdom, Louis 
XII. did not abandon Italy. La Tr^mouille and Trivulzio 
descended into it with a fine army, and shut up the Swiss 
and Maximilian Sforza in Novara. But the Swiss, attack- 
ing the French artillery with the utmost valor, routed the 
besieging army. Genoa took advantage of this disaster to 
regain its freedom. Louis had no longer a single possession 
beyond the Alps. 

For a long series of years the French provinces had seen 
no hostile armies : two now entered it, — on the east, the 
Swiss ; on the north, the English, accompanied by the Em- 
peror Maximilian. Near Guinegate a panic seized upon 
the French armies ; their rapid flight gave the affair the 
name of the Battle of the Spurs. The Swiss penetrated 
as far as Dijon, and were stopped only by much payment 
of money and still larger promises. The sole ally of France, 
James IV. of Scotland, shared her ill fortunes ; he was 
defeated and killed at Flodden by the English. 



294 LOUIS XIL 

Sea-Fights. — From the beginning of tlie Italian wars 
important services had been rendered to Prance by the sail- 
ors of Provence and the galleys of Marseilles, and espe- 
cially by the brave and skilful Pr^gent de Bidoiilx. In 
1513" Pr^gent, summoned from the Mediterranean to the 
Atlantic to oppose the English, attacked and defeated their 
fleet, under Sir Edward Howard, and then appeared upon the 
English coast and ravaged Sussex. Some months afterward 
the fleet which had landed at Calais the army of Henry 
VIII., cruising along the coasts of Brittany, met the Prench, 
who had only some twenty Breton and Norman ships under 
the command of Herv6 Primoguet. The English had two 
or three times as many ships, but their adversaries attacked 
them resolutely. At the first shock several English ships 
were sunk. Primoguet's ship took fire, but he refused to 
leave it. He made straight for the ship of the English 
admiral, fastened his own ship to it, thus setting it on 
fire, and went down with it. 

Treaties of Peace. — But the triple invasion to which 
France was subjected forced Louis XII. to make peace. 
The treaty of Dijon had rid Prance of the Swiss. Louis 
disavowed the council of Pisa in order to win over the 
Pope, and concluded a truce with the Emperor and the 
king of Aragon (1514). Henry VIII. for some time 
refused to cease from hostilities; the treaty of London, 
which gave him Tournai and one hundred thousand crowns 
per annum for ten years, restored peace on this side also. 
It was sealed by the marriage of Louis XII. with Mary, 
sister of the king of England. Thus, after fifteen years 
of war. Prance was no further advanced beyond the Alps 
than at the end of the reign of Charles VIII. 

New Political Tendencies. — Since the crusades the 
Prench had done little outside of Prance ; and now we 
have here a reign whose history goes on mainly beyond 
the mountains, in Italy. Louis XL had brought the in- 
ternal wars to a conclusion. Eoyalty, finding nothing 
more to conquer within, sought conquests without. The 
same revolution had also occurred in England, in Spain, 
and in Austria. Their princes now had an almost absolute 
authority, and were free to undertake enterprises beyond 
their own frontiers, or unite to restrain Prance. The medi- 
aeval isolation of states comes to an end. Henceforth there 
are general leagues and general wars which more and more 



LOUIS XIL . 295 

intermingle tie European nations and their histories. 
Henceforth the kings have two interests to manage, — to 
defend and aggrandize their kingdoms ; to give their coun- 
tries good administration. Louis XII. succeeded ill in the 
first of these tasks, but in respect to the second there is 
almost nothing but praise to be said of him. 

Beneficent Administration; the Cardinal of Amboise. — 
The accession of Louis XII. to the throne had added to the 
royal domain the duchy of Orleans and the counties of 
Valois and Blois, his appanages. He made strenuous 
efforts to meet all his personal and household expenses 
with the product of his domains ; this permitted him to 
reduce the taxes by nearly one-third : namely, to 2,600,000 
livres, or about 68,000,000 francs. The revenue of the 
State was scrupulously employed in the payment of sol- 
diers, in the encouragement of industry and agriculture, 
in the construction of useful public works, or in embel- 
lishment of the royal chateaux, promoting taste and art. 
Pensions and extravagant festivities were abolished. The 
strictest economy regulated the royal expenses. " I would 
rather," said he, " see the courtiers laughing at my avarice 
than the people weeping at my extravagance." He deliv- 
ered the peasants from the depredations of soldiers. Thus 
agriculture flourished and commerce expanded to a degree 
hitherto unknown in France. "The third part of the king- 
dom," says a contemporary, "was cleared in twelve years, 
and for one great merchant at Paris, Lyons, or Rouen in 
former times, there were fifty under Louis XIL, and they 
made less of going to Rome, Naples, or London, than in for- 
mer times to Lyons or Geneva." He assembled the States- 
General only once, in 1506. It was these states which, by 
the mouth of the representatives of Paris, justly bestowed 
upon him the best name that a king can earn, that of Father 
of his People. 

History has always united with his name that of his 
worthy counsellor, George of Amboise, who for twenty- 
seven years was not so much his minister as his friend. 
Born in 1460 of an illustrious family, Amboise was at the 
age of fourteen made bishop of Montauban. Early attached 
to the young Duke of Orleans, he became successively arch- 
bishop of Narbonne and, in 1493, of Rouen. The duke him- 
self was at that time governor of Normandy; he gave the 
principal authority over the province to the archbishop, 



296 LOUIS XIL 

who there began those useful reforms which after the 
death of Charles VIII. he extended throughout the whole 
kingdom. He loved the people as the king loved him, and 
was equally beloved by them. Created cardinal, governor 
of the Milanese, and legate of the Holy See in France, he 
exercised the greatest influence upon the affairs of France 
and Italy, and if, like his master, he committed mistakes in 
foreign policy, his administration had a character of upright- 
ness and leniency which were not seen again till long after 
his time, though indeed he accumulated immense wealth. 

New Parliaments ; Revision of the Customs. — The parlia- 
ments, exercising royal justice in their provinces, were the 
most powerful instruments which royalty could use for its 
aggrandizement. On this account Louis XI. had multiplied 
them. Louis XIL, for the promotion of justice, increased 
their number still further. He established two new parliar 
ments, — one in Provence (1501), and the other in Normandy 
(1499). 

Charles VIII. had designed to cause the editing and pub- 
lication of the customary law of each province, in order to 
release suitors from the danger of arbitrary decisions on the 
part of the judges. He published seven of them. Under 
King Louis, between 1505 and 1514, twenty other customs 
were reduced to writing by experts, after mature delibera- 
tion, and printed. This publication was the most important 
legislative work of the old monarchy, down to the time of 
Louis XIV., for it was not so much an editing as a reforma- 
tion of the customary law, effected in accordance with the 
anti-feudal spirit which prevailed among the legists and in 
the Parliament. 

Judicial Administration ; Offices. — An ordinance of 1510 
substituted French for Latin in criminal procedure, in order 
that witnesses might hear their own depositions read, and 
the accused might hear the charges which were preferred 
against them. French was already employed for the acts 
of the civil authorities. Louis attempted to diminish the 
extortions practised by the courts. The baillis, who were 
all noblemen and soldiers, were obliged to be graduated at 
universities, or to leave the administration of justice to 
lieutenants chosen from among the lawyers. Similar regu- 
lations were made for the manorial courts of lords. 

Louis XIL sold certain public offices in order to procure 
money j but they were mostly financial offices, and it was 



LOUIS XIL 297 

at any rate a very ancient practice. An ordinance of 1506 
authorized private individuals to use the relays of post- 
horses established by Louis XI. 

Beginning of the French Renaissance. — The Italian wars 
had been in many ways a grave mistake. But through 
them French civilization gained by entering more actively 
into the Eenaissance. Since the thirteenth century so much 
misery had fallen upon France that culture had declined. 
Art had no longer the beautiful but severe grandeur of the 
Gothic architecture of St. Louis' time. The language had 
shown itself naive and already elegant ; but sustained force 
was still lacking to the French writers, Comines excepted, 
because the great models of antiquity remained almost 
wholly unknown to them. But Italy had just rediscovered 
this rich antiquity. Aretino and Poggio in letters, Leo- 
nardo da Vinci and Brunelleschi in art, had brought in a 
renaissance which was all antique and pagan. There was, 
it is true, more of translation and imitation than of imagi- 
nation ; poetic inspiration was cast in the mould of Horace 
and Virgil, and the most eloquent aspired only to speak like 
Cicero. The French arrived when this movement was put- 
ting forth its greatest energies, and brought back with them 
over the mountains a taste for these new achievements. 
Antiquity had also in France its ardent devotees, — Gaguin, 
Vatable, Bud6, and Dan^s. 

The memory of the handsome cities, of the rich palaces, 
and of all the elegance of Milan, Eome, and Florence in- 
spired the idea of improving the French cities and the con- 
struction of manor-houses, especially now that the king's 
artillery had made thick walls useless. A less massive 
architecture was sought for, which should give entrance to 
air and light. Italian architects crossed the mountains 
and helped on this movement of renovation. Notable 
among them was Fra Giocondo, royal architect to Louis 
XII. The cardinal of Amboise shared all the tastes of his 
master. He caused Eoger Ango to begin the Palais de 
Justice at Eouen, which presents a graceful mixture of the 
new and the old art, of the Gothic transformed by the Ee- 
naissance ; he also erected the beautiful chateau of Gaillon. 

Death of Louis XII. — The peace would doubtless have 
rendered the reign of Louis XII. more fruitful in benefi- 
cent reforms and in artistic achievements if he had lived 
longer. Anne of Brittany had died in January, 1514. Louis, 



298 EoxnB xir. 

"who had greatly loved her, contracted in August a political 
marriage : he married Mary, sister of Henry VIII., a prin- 
cess of sixteen, who compelled him to change his simple 
and regular life. Festivities and tournaments were for sev- 
eral months continual. Louis had been in delicate health 
ever since 1604 ; this new mode of life killed him. He died 
on the first of January, 1515, at the age of fifty-three, sin- 
cerely mourned by his- people. 



TENTH PERIOD. 



FiKST Struggle of France against the House 
OF Austria. — Increase of the Royal Power. 
— =The Renaissance. (1615-1559.) 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

FRANCIS I. 
(1515-1547 A.D.) 

France at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century. — With 
the sixteenth century a new era in the history of France 
begins. After the long struggles for national unity the 
royal domain now at most points touched the natural fron- 
tiers of France. Excepting Calais, there was no foreign terri- 
tory which interrupted that of the king along all the coasts of 
the Channel and the Atlantic. In the south the sole excep- 
tion was Eoussillon. But on the north and the northeast 
its frontier was ill arranged. The restitution of Franche- 
Comt6 had lost France the frontier of the Jura, that of Artois 
had exposed Paris. On that side much still remained to be 
done toward removing the enemy's frontier from the neigh- 
borhood of the capital, since the ill-conceived policy of 
Charles VIII. had uselessly diverted to Italy the strength 
of France, which ought to have been employed on the north 
and the east. Yet great results had been achieved. There 
was now one single France extending from the Channel to 
the Mediterranean, and from the Pyrenees to the Meuse, a 
vast country placed between Spain, England, Germany, and 
Italy, to hold the balance between them, to receive their vari- 
ous influences and to impart her own, to the great profit of 
general civilization. 



300 FRANCIS I. 

In internal affairs tlie French kings had already greatly- 
advanced their work of levelling and unification ; the com- 
munes had renounced their privileges, and the lords had lost 
their independence, but the serfs had been enfranchised in 
great numbers, so that all found themselves brought nearer 
together and formed one great people, in the midst of which 
there still remained many diversities, but which had never- 
theless, ever since the time of Jeanne d'Arc, shown its unity. 
To complete the evolution of French society out of the civil 
institutions of the Middle Ages was the work which, in 
internal affairs, was to be accomplished by modern French 
royalty. Abroad, France, after having checked the house of 
Austria in the exaggerated extension of its power, was to 
regain gradually the limits of ancient Gaiil 'and to impose 
upon Europe its supremacy. The sign of this growing 
nationality was the French language, which was becoming 
purified and was spreading throughout Europe. French 
literature was to reign far and wide over the minds of men, 
and even in days of reverse and abasement France was to 
be consoled by the influence of her genius, her arts, her 
letters, and her sciences. 

Francis I. (1515-1547) ; Battle of Marignano (1515). — 
The successor of Louis XII., Francis I., was descended from 
a third son of that Duke of Orleans who had been assas- 
sinated in 1407. After the Father of his People came 
"the King of Gentlemen." Handsome and strong, brave 
and intelligent, prodigal of his person in battles and of the 
money of his subjects in court festivities, imperious in com- 
mand, yet easily led, a friend of arts and letters, himself a 
scholar, Francis I. pushed his defects as well as his good 
qualities to an extreme. But with the pride of power, 
Francis had also a strong feeling for the greatness of 
France. He conquered nothing, but he kept France intact 
in perilous times and in the face of the greatest adversary 
that she ever had. He increased taxation and spent lav- 
ishly, but he reformed justice and gave a vigorous impulse 
to letters and arts. Finally, he covered his vices and his 
faults with a certain brilliancy of knightly generosity and 
kingly greatness. 

Francis had promised himself to give the administration 
a more energetic tone as soon as he was master. Duprat, 
an able but unscrupulous man, whom he made chancellor, 
was charged with the duty of applying the new maxims of 



FRANCIS I. 301 

government. Declining to renew the existing truce, Fran- 
cis prepared to cross tlie Alps, after having given the con- 
stable's sword to the Duke of Bourbon, an impetuous man, 
capable of great things, but little adapted to the r6le of a 
subject; and the regency to his mother, Louise of Savoy, 
a vain, greedy, and passionate woman, who, however, had 
great love for her son. 

A formidable army was gathered around Lyons and in Dau- 
phiny : it included eighteen thousand foot-soldiers, mostly 
Gascons, twenty thousand German lanzknechts, seventy 
large cannon, and three hundred smaller pieces. Among 
the commanders were the constable of Bourbon, marshals 
La Palice, Lautrec, d'Aubigny, and Trivulzio, six dukes, a 
great engineer, Pedro Navarro, and, more illustrious than 
all, "the knight without fear and without reproach," the 
brave Bayard. Venice and Genoa summoned Francis into 
Italy. The young sovereign of the Netherlands, Charles of 
Austria, had made a treaty with him in spite of his two 
grandfathers, the emperor Maximilian and the king of Ara- 
gon. But these two princes. Pope Leo X., and the Duke of 
Milan had cemented anew their alliance, and twenty thou- 
sand Swiss in their pay guarded the passages of Mont Cenis 
and Mont Gen^vre, the only two routes by which it was 
thought possible for a French army to enter Piedmont. 

Francis I. began with a masterly stroke. Discovering 
that the Col de TArgenti^re was practicable, he led his army 
over the AI^ds by that pass, and on the fifth day descended 
into the plains of Saluzzo. A body of cavalry crossed at 
a higher point, by the Col d'Agnello, and surprised at table 
in the Villa Franca the general of the x^apal troops. Prosper 
Colonna, who was captured with seven hundred of his 
horsemen. The enemy found themselves outflanked. The 
Swiss, astonished, retreated on Milan, to effect a junction 
with the Spanish army which was watching the Venetians. 
The French followed them to Marignano. The Swiss en- 
tered into negotiations with the king, who offered them 
seven hundred thousand crowns ; but, large reinforcements 
arriving, they decided to fight. 

On the 13th of September the Swiss, marching out from 
Milan, advanced with lowered pikes upon the French artil- 
lery, thinking to capture it ; but the flower of the French 
gendarmerie was there, all mailed in iron, men and horses. 
Thirty successive charges failed to arrest the advance of the 



302 FRANCIS L 

Swiss. With their pikes eigliteen feet long, they resembled 
the Macedonian phalanx, so long invincible. The French 
artillery, well directed, mowed down entire files of them. The 
steady column continued to advance ; three times it seized 
the first batteries, around which raged " a battle of giants." 
The constable, the princes, and the lords did not spare them- 
selves. The king himself charged at the head of his house- 
hold troops, and received several blows upon his armor. 
The sun setting, the fight continued by moonlight until the 
night was dark. The French and Swiss forces were inter- 
mingled, and remained so, waiting for daylight. The battle 
was renewed at daybreak ; but between nine and ten o'clock 
in the morning the Swiss heard behind them the cry of 
" Marco ! Marco ! " uttered by the advance guard of the Vene- 
tians, who were hastening to take part in the battle. Then 
they retired in good order and recrossed their mountains 
without stop23ing. 

This was a brilliant beginning of the new reign. The 
French army was intoxicated with joy ; the young king re- 
ceived knighthood on the field of battle from the hands of 
Bayard. 

Perpetual Peace with the Swiss ; Concordat with Leo X. 
(1516). — Francis used his victory with moderation. He 
did not think of conquering Naples, but simply of securing 
strong positions in the north of the peninsula. The Doge 
of Genoa gave up his city to him ; Maximilian Sforza was 
induced to abandon his duchy ; Verona was secured to the 
Venetians ; Parma and Piacenza to the Milanese. The king 
of England allowed Tournai to be redeemed. Finally a 
well-conceived treaty excluded the Swiss from Italy, and 
the confederation, as in Louis XL's time, engaged to permit 
the king to levy in their territory the troops which he needed. 
Francis I. paid the Swiss the seven hundred thousand crowns 
which he had offered them before the victory. This peace, 
concluded with the thirteen cantons at Geneva and Freiburg 
(1515 and 1516), was rightly called the Perpetual Peace, 
for it lasted as long as the old French monarchy itself. 

Francis guaranteed the Medici the possession of Florence, 
but replaced the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII. by a 
concordat, which put the French clergy under his control. 
Leo X. preserved appeals to the court of Eome in the more 
important cases, but renounced reservations and provisions. 
He conceded to the king the right of disposing absolutely of 



FRANCIS L 303 

ecclesiastical dignities, preserving only the right of refusing 
spiritual investiture to the nominees in case of canonical un- 
fitness. Francis renounced the doctrine of the Fathers of 
Basel respecting the superiority of councils to the Pope, 
and re-established the annates or year's revenue which every 
clerk promoted to an important benefice was obliged to pay 
to the sovereign pontiff. Thus each gave up that which, 
according to the public law of the kingdom, did not belong 
to him. The clergy, the universities, and the judicial courts 
protested against the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction, 
which affected various prerogatives of corporations and per- 
sons, and the Parliament of Paris refused to register the 
concordat. But after two years of resistance they were 
forced to yield. The concordat embodied a considerable 
increase of the royal authority, for it made the clergy de- 
pendent upon the king, as the nobility had been since Louis 
XI., as the bourgeoisie had always been. 

Court of Francis I. — Francis, struck by the marvels of 
the Italian renaissance, induced several of the great Italian 
artists to follow him beyond the mountains, and bought from 
the others some of their most noted works. What was better 
than the money he gave the artists, was the regard which 
the young conqueror showed for the leaders of intellectual 
life. He loved all intellectual things, and the savant, the 
poet, and the artist found their place in the brilliant court 
with which he surrounded himself. 

This French court, which exercised so long-continued and 
often so pernicious an influence upon public manners, upon 
letters, upon the spirit of the nation, and even upon foreign 
nations, dates from the time of Francis I. Before him it 
had not existed. Louis XII. was surrounded only by grave 
counsellors, and the chaste Anne of Brittany allowed in her 
circle only quiet and infrequent pleasures. Francis I. de- 
sired always to be followed by a troop numbering thousands. 
He also attracted to his court, by the splendor of his festiv- 
ities, the noble ladies, hitherto forgotten in the depths 
of their feudal manor-houses. At first this had excellent 
effects ; but morals soon became corrupted, and the influence 
of women upon the government proved pernicious. Three 
women, especially, exercised a disastrous influence over this 
court during the reign of Francis I., — his mother, Louise of 
Savoy, the Countess of Ch^teaubriant, and the Duchess of 
Etampes. 



304 FRANCIS I. 

Treaty of Noyon (1616). — Until 1519 France and Europe 
remained at peace. In 1516 Ferdinand the Catholic died. 
This death gave Aragon, Navarre, Naples, Sicily, and Sar- 
dinia to Charles of Austria, already sovereign of the Nether- 
lands and king of Castile. Francis did not attempt to pre- 
vent his obtaining this magnificent heritage. He concluded 
with him the treaty of Noyon (1516), which arranged an 
offensive and defensive alliance between the two princes. 
But the occurrence of another death, that of Maximilian 
(1519), changed everything. 

Kivalry of Francis and Charles ; Charles V. elected Em- 
peror. — Francis I. hoped to obtain the imperial crown. 
Germany needed a prince capable of defending it against 
the Turks. But the German princes thought of the condi- 
tion into which the kings of France had reduced the great 
lords of their country, and feared a similar fate. It seemed 
unlikely that anything of the sort was to be feared from 
the new king of Spain, a young man without glory, whose 
states were numerous but scattered, and who, being master 
of Austria, would necessarily receive the first blows of the 
Turks if they fell upon Germany. Henry VIII. of England 
also entered the lists, but his candidacy was not of serious 
importance. All the contestants lavished money upon the 
electors ; but though Francis had given the most, Charles of 
Austria was elected and became Charles V. Two centuries 
of war arose from this election. 

Francis clearly perceived the dangers to France and to 
Europe arising from the union of so many crowns upon one 
head. From that day the policy of France changed. The 
liberty of the continent was menaced. Master of Spain and 
Naples, of the Netherlands and of Austria, Charles V., so to 
speak, held Europe by the four corners. He was now also 
emperor of Germany, with vague rights of suzerainty over 
Italy ; he was soon to bring the Pope and Henry VIII. into 
his alliance ; and Cortes and Pizarro were conquering Mex- 
ico and Peru for him. France was menaced on three sides, — 
on the side of the Pyrenees, of Franche-Comt6, and of 
Flanders. It is the glory of Francis I. that he accepted 
what seemed an unequal contest with the house of Austria. 
He believed that a compact kingdom, a population military, 
rich, and devoted, had as much strength as this imposing list 
of states discordant and dispersed, this empire ''upon which 
the sun never set." 



m 



FRAJSfCIS I. 305 

Negotiations with England (1520). — The two rivals con- 
tended for alliance with Henry VIII. Francis I. offered 
him splendid festivities in the Field of the Cloth of Gold, 
near Gnines, in June, 1520, but, by his magnificent display, 
only offended Henry instead of winning him. Charles V., 
more shrewd, went to meet Henry VIII. at Gravelines in 
ordinary attire like a dependent, pensioned his favorite 
minister. Cardinal Wolsey, to whom he promised the papal 
tiara, and thus secured the English alliance. 

The French in Navarre ; the Imperialists in Champagne 
(1521). — Beaten in diplomacy, Francis hoped for better 
success in war. He sent into Navarre, which Charles V. 
had not restored to Henry d'Albret, an army which was 
alleged to be in the pay of that prince. At the same 
time, the Duke of Bouillon, secretly instigated and paid by 
France, declared war upon the emperor and attacked Lux- 
emburg. But the French were easily driven out of Navarre. 
In the north the general of Charles V. seized the duchy of 
Bouillon and invaded Champagne. But Bayard, by a brave 
defence of M^zi^res, saved France from an invasion which 
there was no army ready to resist. 

Defeat of Bicocca (1522) ; Loss of the Milanese. — There 
was now open war between France and the emperor. The 
first serious blow was struck in Italy. Lautrec, with forces 
inferior to the Spanish troops of Pescara, abandoned Parma, 
Piacenza, and even Milan (1521). Attacking the emperor's 
forces at Bicocca with his Swiss troops he was defeated, 
and the Swiss returned to their mountains (1522). 

Treason of Bourbon; Triple Invasion of France (1523). — 
Francis I. believed that all could be restored by his personal 
presence. He sent twenty-five thousand men towards the 
Alps ; but at the moment when he was about to go and take 
command of them, a plot was discovered, the success of which 
would have ruined France. Charles V., assured of the new 
Pope, Adrian VI., his former tutor, and of the king of Eng- 
gland, had gained a powerful ally in the very midst of the 
court of France. Master of La Marche, of Bourbonnais, of 
Auvergne, of Forez, and of Beaujolais, the constable of Bour- 
bon maintained the state of a prince. An able soldier, 
proud and ambitious, he listened to the overtures of Charles 
v., who promised him, in addition to his present possessions, 
Dauphiny, Provence, and Lyonnais, to be erected into a 
kingdom, as the price of his defection. Henry VIII. was 



306 FRANCIS I. 

to obtain the western provinces ; th.e emperor was to recover 
Burgundy and the towns of the Somme ; there was thus a 
complete plan for the dismemberment of France. The last 
representative of the mediaeval feudalism, Bourbon believed 
that he could do as the old dukes of Brittany and Burgundy 
had done ; he forgot that there was now a French nation, 
determined to remain united, and that a treason towards the 
king was treason to it. 

The projected triple invasion occurred. Francis sent 
Lautrec into Guienne to confront the twenty-five thousand 
Spaniards who were vainly attacking Bayonne, Count 
Claude of Guise against twelve thousand German lanz- 
knechts, who had come in through Franche-Comte and Cham- 
pagne, but were now driven back behind the Meuse ; finally, 
old La Tremouille wai; sent against the thirty-five thousand 
English and Flemings who had advanced to within eleven 
leagues of Paris, but whom he, by skilful manoeuvres, with 
a handful of men, first stopped, then drove back. 

Death of Bayard ; Invasion of Provence (1524). — But in 
Italy Admiral Bonnivet, brave but incapable, was forced to 
retreat. Bayard, conducting the rear-guard, was mortally 
wounded. As the French were fleeing toward the Alps, 
Bourbon, overtaking them, found the good knight lying at 
the foot of a tree, with his face to the enemy, and expressed 
his grief at seeing him in that state. "It is not I who am 
to be pitied," said he, " for I die like an honest man ; but I 
pity you, who are serving against your prince, your country, 
and your oath." 

Bourbon now crossed the frontier of France. Provence 
lay open to him, except Marseilles, which was well forti- 
fied, and received him with stout resistance. Bourbon per- 
sisted forty days in this siege. But on the approach of 
Francis I., with eight thousand horsemen, thirty-four thou- 
sand foot-soldiers, and a strong body of artillery, the impe- 
rial army, demoralized, retreated to the Alps. 

Battle of Pavia (1525). — The king of France, advancing 
into Italy, the theatre of his former exploits, seized Milan 
without striking a blow, and imprudently detached a body 
of ten thousand men to conquer the kingdom of Naples, while 
he himself was pressing the siege of Pavia. But Bourbon, 
Pescara, and Lannoy, gathering troops from all quarters, 
advanced upon him there, and enclosed him between them 
and the town, garrisoned by six thousand men. The posi- 



FRANCIS I. 307 

tion was dangerous ; the old generals advised him to raise 
the siege, but Francis determined on battle (Feb. 25, 
1525). 

But he began the attack with the men-at-arms too soon. 
The Spanish infantry took advantage of his mistake. His 
Swiss retreated. La Tr^mouille, La Palice, and his best 
generals fell around the king. The king himself, wounded, 
surrounded by corpses, continued fighting for a long time, 
but finally was forced to surrender. His letter to his 
mother, announcing the result, has been condensed into the 
phrase, " All is lost save honor." 

Regency of Louise of Savoy; Captivity of the King; 
Treaty of Madrid (1526) . — But France was not lost. Her 
frontiers were not even attacked. The regent showed a 
laudable and intelligent activity. She ransomed the cap- 
tives, gathered a new army, repressed internal disorders, 
negotiated secretly with Venice, with the Pope, even with 
the Turkish sultan, Solyman, instigating him to attack 
Austria, and purchased the alliance of Henry VIII. 

Meanwhile Francis I., at Madrid, was not finding Charles 
V. as magnanimous as he had expected. The emperor 
kept him in captivity, and for a long time refused to see 
him. Sick with chagrin, Francis consented to sign a dis- 
astrous treaty (January, 1526), though secretly protesting 
its nullity as made under duress. He ceded Burgundy to 
Charles, renounced all claims to Naples, Milan, Genoa, 
Flanders, and Artois, restored Bourbon to his possessions, 
and promised to marry the emperor's sister, the queen dow- 
ager of Portugal. Exchanged for his two sons at the 
frontier, he spurred his horse on to French soil, exultingly 
exclaiming, " I am again a king." An assembly of notables 
decided that the king was incompetent to give up the first 
peerage of the kingdom. The states of Burgundy appealed 
to the coronation oath, and declared that they would remain 
French in spite of king and emperor. Charles loudly 
accused Francis of disloyalty. 

The Holy League (1526); Sack of Rome (1527). — After 
much negotiation, Francis signed, with Pope Clement VIL, 
the king of England, Venice, Florence, and the Swiss, a 
Holy League for the deliverance of Italy. That unfortu- 
nate country, for thirty-two years the theatre of war, was 
at this moment a prey to bands of mercenaries. The con- 
stable of Bourbon descended from the Alps at the head of 



308 FRANCIS I. 

a new army of ten or fifteen thousand fanatical and pillag- 
ing Lutherans. The constable could not control his men. 
After having devoured the Milanese, the lanzknechts wished 
for another prey, Florence or Rome, — especially Eome, the 
sacrilegious Babylon. Bourbon led them thither, meditat- 
ing great designs, perhaps the kingship of Italy. But at 
the assault of the walls he was the first to fall. His sol- 
diers avenged him cruelly. For nine months Rome under- 
went tortures and outrages such as the Goths and Vandals 
had not inflicted iipon her. 

Second War with Charles V. (1527-1529) ; Treaty of Cam- 
brai (1529). — Francis now sent Lautrec to conquer the 
kingdom of Naples, the possession of which was so useless 
to France. Lautrec at first had brilliant success, but a pes- 
tilence carried off the general and discouraged the soldiers, 
and the expedition was ruined. This was the fourth French 
army which Italy had swallowed up since the battle of 
Bicocca. The peninsula remained m the hands of Charles 
V. It was to remain for more than three centuries in the 
power or under the influence of the house of Austria. 

Charles seemed likely now to attack France. But a 
religious war was on the point of breaking out in Ger- 
many ; Solyman, the secret ally of Francis I., sent his 
redoubtable janizaries forward even to the walls of Vienna; 
and the king of England threatened to abandon the Aus- 
trian alliance by repudiating his wife, Catherine of Aragon, 
the aunt of Charles. The emperor, therefore, desired to 
secure peace in the west. Louise of Savoy and Margaret 
of Austria, the aunt of Charles V., met at Cambrai, and con- 
cluded the Ladies' Peace. Charles, who kept Naples and 
was soon to be crowned king of Lombardy, renounced his 
claims upon Burgundy, but maintained all the other con- 
ditions of the treaty of Madrid. 

Six Years' Peace (1529-1535). — This suspension of hos- 
tilities lasted till the end of the year 1535. Charles and 
Francis employed it to advantage, but in different ways. 
The emperor took the offensive against the Turks. With 
a large fleet he attacked Tunis, a nest of pirates. The fort 
of La Goletta was captured, twenty thousand Christians 
delivered, and Tunis brought under the suzerainty of 
Charles V. (1535). 

Francis meanwhile devoted himself to the works of peace. 
At the same time, he organized a national infantry of 



FRANCIS I. 309 

forty-two thousand men, restored his alliance with Henry 
VIII., won over the Pope by asking for his son the hand of 
the Pope's niece, Catherine de' Medici, renewed the ancient 
friendship with the Scotch by causing their king to marry 
first his eldest daughter, then Mary of Guise, signed the 
first French treaties with Denmark and Sweden, and openly 
sent an embassy to Sultan Solyman, which virtually con- 
cluded a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with him. 
The German Protestants, confederated against the emperor 
at Schmalkald, also received overtures from Francis I. 
(1532) . These two alliances put him in a delicate position, 
but he did not hesitate to subordinate religious to political 
interests. 

The Reformation. — This schism in the Church was pro- 
duced by that irresistible movement, which in the sixteenth 
century was carrying men's minds beyond the traditional 
horizon. The rediscovery of antiquity had opened to 
thought paths hitherto unknown. While Columbus and 
Vasco da Gama were discovering new worlds, Copernicus 
was discovering the true laws of the universe. The age, 
stirred with wonder at these new ideas, began to doubt 
many ancient beliefs. The spirit of curiosity and examina- 
tion extended everywhere, transformed arts, letters, sciences, 
and society, and desired also to transform religious institu- 
tions. The councils of Basel and Constance, in the fifteenth 
century, had in vain proposed to reform ecclesiastical dis- 
cipline and morals. The Church would not reform herself, 
and before eighty years had passed a revolution deprived 
her of half Europe. In 1517 Luther had commenced his 
struggle against Rome ; in 1520 the rupture was complete ; 
and in a few years large parts of Germany went over to the 
new cause. 

The Reformation in France. — The new doctrines early 
obtained entrance into France. Their first conquests were 
among the scholars ; all the great French jurisconsults of 
this century either secretly or openly accepted the doc- 
trines of the Reformation. Even a part of the court 
inclined to them. Lefebvre d'lStaples and Louis Berquin, 
scholars known and esteemed by Francis, supported them : 
the former had begun six years before Luther. The favor- 
ite poet of the court, Clement Marot, became a Protestant, 
Francis at first showed no disfavor to the Reformers ; but 
the peasant revolts in Germany gave him the feeling that 



310 FRANCIS I. 

the revolt against the Pope would easily lead to a revolt 
against the king; and though he remained the interested 
friend of the German Protestants, he would not permit the 
spread of their doctrines in his own states. 

During the king's captivity two Lutherans had been 
burned in Paris. Later Berquin, refusing to recant, was 
burned ; at Vienne, at S6ez, at Toulouse, other executions 
took place. The necessity of placating the Protestants of 
Germany relaxed the persecution. But in 1536 six unfor- 
tunate victims were executed in different open spaces in 
Paris, in the presence of the court. 

Third War with Charles V. (1536-1538). —The peace 
was broken by a misdeed of the Emperor. Prancis had a 
secret agent at Milan : at the instance of Charles this agent 
was seized and put tc death in 1533, by Duke Francesco 
Sforza. The duke dying soon after without heirs, Francis 
at once laid claim to the Milanese. At the beginning of 
1536 he seized Savoy and Piedmont. The emperor was at 
this moment returning from his glorious expedition against 
Tunis. At the news of this aggression he swore vengeance, 
and sent against Marseilles the fleet which had just reduced 
Tunis. His second invasion of Provence was not more for- 
tunate than the first. The constable, Montmorency, destroyed 
villages and open towns, farms, mills, and provisions, made 
the country a desert in front of the imperial army, and 
intrenched himself in a strong position near Avignon. The 
enemy penetrated to within sight of Aix and Marseilles ; but 
found himself in a devastated cou.ntry, in the mi'dst of an 
irritated population, which intercepted convoys and cut off 
stragglers. Decimated by hunger and dysentery, the Im- 
perialists retreated. It was for a second time proved that 
France is invulnerable on this side. 

At the same time the Picards bravely defended the north- 
eastern frontier, and the Norman corsairs took prizes to the 
value of two hundred thousand crowns of gold from the 
Spaniards. Charles had failed in France. But Francis 
succeeded neither in the Netherlands nor in Italy. The 
Pope interposed, and by his mediation the truce of Nice, to 
last ten years, was signed in 1538. Francis kept Savoy 
and Piedmont. 

Charles V. in France (1539). — From irreconcilable ene- 
mies the two sovereigns seemed to become devoted friends. 
Some time later the city of Ghent, overburdened with taxa- 



FRANCIS I. 311 

tion, revolted against diaries V., and offered itself to his 
rival. Francis not only refused the offer, but invited the 
emperor to cross his kingdom in order to be able the sooner 
to crush the rebels. The emperor accepted. He was mag- 
nificently received and feted. Francis hoped to overcome 
his politic friend by generosity, and to obtain as a gift the 
Milanese. Hints and importunities were not spared. But 
the emperor reached Flanders without his voyage having 
cost him anything but vague promises. The king, who had 
counted on the investiture of the Milanese for one of his 
sons, was deeply vexed at having been thus duped by the 
emperor. The assassination of two French agents in Tur- 
key caused war to break out. 

Fourth War with Charles V. (1543-1544). — This time 
the efforts of Francis and Solyman were better combined. 
The Turkish janizaries conquered almost all Hungary, 
while Francis covered Luxemburg and Piedmont with his 
armies. A Turkish and French squadron captured Mce, the 
only town which remained in the possession of the Duke of 
Savoy. 

Charles V. exclaimed loudly at this treason to the Chris- 
tian cause. He concluded peace with the Protestants of 
Germany and renewed his alliance with the king of Eng- 
land. A new invasion of France at three points at once 
was resolved upon. The governor of the Milanese, at the 
head of a Spanish force, was to make his way through the 
French army in Piedmont and enter France. In the north 
the emperor and Henry VIII. were to meet beneath the walls 
of Paris : the one was to proceed thither through Champagne, 
the other through Picardy. But the Duke of Enghien se- 
verely defeated the Spaniards at Cerisola in Piedmont, and 
remained master of that country, yet was unable to advance 
further, because a part of his troops was recalled to defend 
the North of France from invasion (1544). 

Peace of Crespy (1544) . — Charles V. had entered Cham- 
pagne without resistance, taken St. Dizier, and advanced to 
within twenty-four leagues of Paris. Fortunately for France, 
the king of England, unfaithful to the plan agreed upon, 
persisted in the siege of Boulogne, and left his ally isolated, 
without money or provisions, in the midst of the French 
provinces. Charles, at the moment when he believed his 
enemy reduced to the last extremity, was obliged to sign 
the Peace of Crespy (1544). The two sovereigns mutually 



312 FRANCIS I. 

restored tlieir recent conquests : Francis remained master of 
Savoy and Piedmont, and obtained the Milanese for his 
younger son. But the young prince died, and the emperor 
hastened to give his son Philip Lombardy, which the house 
of Austria kept from that day to that of Solferino. Henry 
VIII. made peace in 1546. 

Massacre of the Vaudois (1545) . — Francis, ruined before 
his time by his excesses, was at fifty-one a morose old man. 
As long as the war with Charles V. continued he had spared 
the heretics. But after the conclusion of peace, harsh and 
evil counsellors obtained the ascendancy. .They attributed 
the king's reverses, and even his physical sufferings, to the 
relaxation of persecution. The king was persuaded to order 
new severities. At Meaux fourteen heretics were burned in 
a single day ; but the most odious execution was that of an 
entire population of inoffensive persons, the Vaudois of the 
Alpine valleys, whose beliefs were more than three centuries 
old. 

They had been condemned in 1540 as heretics. Execution 
had been stayed in favor of these peaceable peasants, who 
paid their taxes regularly and maintained pure and simple 
manners. But in April, 1545, precise and rigorous orders 
came from the court to the Parliament of Aix. Three thou- 
sand of the Vaudois were massacred or burned in their dwell- 
ings ; six hundred and sixty were sent to the galleys ; the 
rest were dispersed into the woods and mountains, where 
most of them died of hunger and misery. JSTot a house or a 
tree remained standing for fifteen leagues around. 

Death of the King (1547). — Charles V., released from 
war with France and assured of peace with the Turks, 
turned his forces against the German Protestants, and, 
under pretext of crushing heresy, began to crush the liber- 
ties of Germany. Francis I. meanwhile died at the chdteau 
of Pambouillet, at the age of fifty-two (March, 1547). 
Francis had the faults of brilliancy, for which France has 
always had too great a weakness. Hi^ ^.viiJuntrr na^ cj,!- 
ried to the extent of debauchery. Ins magnificence to pro- 
fusion, his courage to rashness. He was violent and capri- 
cious, and given over to unworthy favorites : he could even 
be unjust, perfidious, and cruel, and was always a man of 
arbitrary will. But he sometimes showed real greatness, 
loved letters, and had a taste for art 

Foundation of Havre de Grace (1517). — Havre dates from 



FRANCIS I. 313 

the time of Francis I. France had at the mouth of the 
Seine only two small harbors, — Honfleur on the left, Harflenr 
on the right. The latter was beginning to be choked with 
sand. Francis I., who desired to have a great maritime 
establishment nj)on the Channel, had search made in the 
neighborhood for a better site. A few miles from there a 
fishing village was found, placed in the midst of a marsh, 
with a little chapel of Our Lady of Grace. But it opened 
directly upon the sea, outside the mouth of the Seine, 
remote from shifting sand-banks, and with favorable con- 
ditions as to tide. In 1517 Chillon, vice-admiral of France, 
laid the first stone of the new city, whose site was so well 
chosen that it has become the greatest port of France for 
oceanic commerce. It was at first named Franciscopolis, 
but the word was too learned for the poor fishermen, who, 
faithful to their patroness, continued to call their town 
Havre de Grace. 



314 HENRY II. 



CHAPTER XL. 

HENRY II, 
(1547-1549 A.D.) 

Henry II. ; Montmorency and the Guises. — Henry II. car- 
ried to excess his father's defects and had none of his high 
qualities, neither intelligence nor grace, caring for nothing 
but bodily exercises. In spite of her forty-eight years, 
Diana of Poitiers by her wit and beauty exercised immense 
influence over him. He created her Duchess of Valentinois 
and allowed her to govern the court, in which the queen 
remained without influence. The chief administration of 
government was confided to the constable Montmorency, to 
Marshal St. Andr6, the king's favorite, and to the family 
of the Guises, a younger branch of the house of Lorraine, 
poor in goods but rich in hopes. There was a great scramble 
for ofiices, honors, and pensions. In a few weeks the king 
squandered four hundred thousand crowns which he found 
gathered in his father's coffers for the German war. Mont- 
morency and the Guises secured the largest share of gifts 
and oflices, and almost monopolized the favor of the king. 

In 1548 a bloody revolt against the salt-tax broke out in 
Guienne. Montmorency marched thither with ten thousand 
men and suppressed it with great severity. 

Alliance with Scotland and the German Protestants. — 
Duke Francis of Guise and his brother Charles, archbishop 
of Eheims, wisely directing the foreign policy of France, 
turned the king's attention toward Germany, and sent 
assistance to the queen dowager of Scotland, their sister. 
Montmorency renewed hostilities with England. Boulogne 
was actively besieged, and the English surrendered it for 
a fifth of the sum stipulated in the treaty. In Germany, 
Charles V., having vanquished the Protestants at Miihlberg, 
found himself more powerful than any emperor had been 
for five centuries. He regulated religious questions at will 
without consulting the Pope, political questions without con- 



HENRY 11. 315 

suiting the Diet ; he was as absolute in the Empire as in 
Italy or in Spain. Henry II. did not give him time to 
assure his triumph nor to become threatening to France. 
He made a secret alliance with Maurice of Saxony, one of 
the emperor's generals, who was now betraying him, and 
published a manifesto in which he declared himself the 
defender of German liberties. But he gave the blood of 
his Protestant subjects as a compensation for this policy, 
which made him almost everywhere the enemy of the 
orthodox, the friend of heretics or unbelievers. The Edict 
of Ch^teaubriant ordered that the Protestants should not 
have the privileges of appeal, closed the schools and courts 
to them, and secured to informers the third part of the prop- 
erty of their victims. 

Conquest of Metz, Toul, and Verdun (1552). — Surprised 
by Maurice of Saxony, Charles V. was nearly captured at 
Innsbruck in May, 1552. Henry II. marched into Lorraine 
with thirty-eight thousand men. Toul and Metz opened 
their gates. An attempt to achieve the same result was 
made at Strassburg, another great free city, but in vain. 
On his return he entered Verdun, and thus completed the 
acquisition of the Trois-Evech^s. 

Siege of Metz (1552-1553). — The emperor, irritated at 
these successes, hastily made peace with the Lutherans at 
Passau, and entered Lorraine at the head of sixty thousand 
men. Erancis of Guise threw himself into Metz with the 
most distinguished nobles of the realm, and hastily fortified 
it. Charles persisted in the siege for two months, and fired 
forty thousand cannon-shots at the town, but could not take 
it, for behind every wall that was broken down the assail- 
ants found a new one. Winter came on. The imperial 
army had lost a third of its numbers when Charles decided 
to raise the siege. He broke camp on the first of January, 
complaining of Fortune. "I see plainly that she is a 
woman," he said ; " she favors a young king more than an 
old emperor." But in reality he had only himself to blame 
for undertaking such an operation in a most unfavorable 
season. 

Further Operations; Abdication of Charles V. (1556). — 
Next year the emperor besieged Th^rouanne in Artois. 
The garrison, thougii small, capitulated only after a brave 
defence ; he razed the place to the ground, and Hesdin also. 
He avenged his humiliated pride by making war with much 



316 HENRY II. 

atrocity. In 1554 Henry II. gave liim ravages for ravages 
in Hainanlt and Brabant, but was finally compelled to retire. 
Meanwhile Brissac, with a small army, had maintained him- 
self in Northern Italy against the Duke of Alva ; Strozzi and 
Montluc defended Sienna against the Florentines and the 
Imperialists ; the Turks threatened Naples ; the Baron de 
la Garde ravaged Elba and set foot in Corsica. The check 
received at Metz was therefore not reversed ; France seemed 
to grow young again with her new • king ; Charles V. grew 
weary of this struggle which he had been sustaining for 
thirty-five years. He gave up the Netherlands, Italy, and 
Spain to his son Philip II. and retired to the monastery of 
Yuste, to seek the repose which ambitious monarchs never 
find (1556). 

Charles had not been able to leave all his crowns to his 
son : Austria and the title of emperor went to his brother 
Ferdinand. The house of Austria was divided. But at 
the moment when Philip II. lost Germany he seemed to 
gain England by a marriage with the queen of that country, 
Mary Tudor. The present and future of France were seri- 
ously menanced by the dominion thus formed, which closed 
her in on three sides. Pope Paul IV. was alarmed at seeing 
the Spaniards both above hrm and below him, at Milan and 
at Naples. The king and the pontiff united. One army, 
under Montmorency, was sent to the Netherlands ; another, 
under the Duke of Guise, into Italy. 

St. Quentin (1557). — Philip II. 'sent against Montmor- 
ency Duke Philibert Emmanuel of Savoy, who, despoiled of 
his estates by France, had everything to expect from Spain ; 
and against Francis of Guise, the Duke of Alva, a true 
Spaniard, entirely devoted to the Church, still more to his 
king. Guise penetrated into the Abruzzi, but failed before 
the skilful tactics of his adversary. Philibert Emmanuel 
marched suddenly upon St. Quentin, where seven thousand 
English troops joined him. The place was without walls, 
ammunition, or provisions. Admiral Coligny threw himself 
into it with seven hundred men. Montmorency approached 
with an inferior army which he managed unskilfully in the 
attempt to reprovision the 'town. Philibert Emmanuel 
attacked him in the front and in the rear, and inflicted upon 
him an overwhelming defeat. Many great nobles were cap- 
tured, together with four thousand men, the artillery, and 
the baggage. More than ten thousand men were killed or 
wounded. 



HENRY II. 317 

" Is my son at Paris ? " cried Charles V., on learning in 
his retreat at Yuste of this great disaster to France. But 
Philip II., a cold and methodical man, obstinate but with- 
out dash, had not believed it prudent to ]3nsh his victory. 
Before taking another step forward, he wished to secure 
St. Quentin; and Coligny, knowing that the safety of 
France was at stake, made heroic efforts to prolong its de- 
fence. Time was thus obtained for assembling the French 
forces, and Philip II. returned to the Netherlands with small 
results from a victory which had seemed likely to prove as 
disastrous to France as Poitiers or Agincourt. 

Capture of Calais (1558). — The Duke of Guise. was 
recalled from Italy in all haste and given the title of 
lieutenant-general of the kingdom, with unlimited powers. 
Guise answered the general expectations by suddenly 
appearing before Calais, in which the English had left 
but a meagre garrison : in seven days it was compelled to 
capitulate. The last reminder of the Hundred Years' 
War was thus removed ; the English no longer had a foot 
of ground in France. The blow was fatal to Queen Mary. 
" If ye open my heart," said she on her death-bed, " ye will 
find written on it the name of Calais." The same blow de- 
stroyed the alliance of England and Spain. Elizabeth, who 
succeeded her sister Mary upon the English throne, brought 
about the triumph of Protestantism in the island, and be- 
came the irreconcilable enemy of the king of Spain. 

Treaty of Cateau-Canibresis (1559). — Philip II., indeed, 
a man of sombre and fanatical mind, desired to arrive at 
the dominion over Europe by other means than those 
employed by his father. Half of Germany, and all the 
Scandinavian states, had separated from Rome ; and the 
Reformation, though stifled in Italy and Spain, was fer- 
menting in France, spreading in the Netherlands, triumph- 
ant in Scotland and England. Philip II. proposed to crush 
Protestantism. He wished to be the armed leader of Cathol- 
icism throughout Europe, the secular arm of the Holy See, 
the executor of the sentences of the Church. His faith 
and his ambition were in accord ; he strove to crush heresy 
not only for the benefit of Christian orthodoxy, but also 
for the benefit of his own power. With this view, he de- 
sired to make peace with the king of France, in order to 
attach him to his designs, and in April, 1559, peace was at 
last signed. 



318 HENRY II. 

By this treaty, France kept tlie Trois-!lEvecli6s, Boulogne, 
and Calais. The kings of France and Spain made mutual 
restoration of their conquests on the frontier of the Nether- 
lands and in Italy. The acquisitions made by France were 
valuable, protecting her against England and Germany. Yet 
what she restored to Spain was of much more extent than 
what she regained from that power. Fortresses in Italy 
were neither necessary nor advantageous to her, but she 
abandoned lands which were really French, — Bugey, Bresse, 
and Savoy, — which she ought to have preserved at any 
price, especially since the Spaniards did not restore to 
Jeaiijie d'Albret the portion of her kingdom of Navarre 
which they had for half a century been occupying. 

Accidental Death of the King (1559). — A double marriage 
was to cement the peace. Philip II., already twice a wid- 
ower, was to marry a daughter of the king of France; 
Philibert Emmanuel, a sister. Brilliant festivities were 
celebrated before the departure of the princesses. In a 
tournament which completed them, Henry was struck in 
the eye by the broken lance of his captain of the guard, 
the Count of Montgomery. He fell mortally wounded, and 
expired eleven days later, at the age of forty-one. It was 
a great misfortune, less for any personal qualities of 
Henry II. than because by his death he left the royal 
authority in the hands of children. Three kings, minors 
or deficient in capacity, were to give up France for thirty 
years to the horrors of a religious and political war. 



f 



GOVERNMENT OF FRANCIS I. AND HENRY II. 319 



CHAPTER XLI. 

GOVERNMENT OF FRANCIS I. AND HENRY II. 

Results of the Wars of Francis I. and Henry II. — Diverted 
by Charles VIII. from the paths in which she would have 
found her true greatness, France for sixty-five years had 
expended her force in remote expeditions. Four times the 
French had been at ISlaples ; French cannon-balls had shot 
across the lagoons of Venice, and the standard of France 
had floated over Sienna, Milan, and Genoa; now, driven 
back, it covered only some few places in Piedmont. 

Yet if France had lost much she had' also gained much. 
Her victories had been brilliant. The honor of having 
struggled after aU. victoriously against Charles V. had 
increased her prestige. Since 1494 she had gained only 
Calais, Metz, Toul, Verdun, and some small towns in Italy, 
but she had saved Europe from the supremacy of Charles 
v., and Germany from the despotism of the house of Aus- 
tria. For the great danger to France and to Europe in the 
sixteenth century was, in fact, the omnipotence of the house 
of Austria, which ruled supreme upon the Rhine and the 
Danube, in Italy and in Spain, and which beyond the seas 
had still another immense empire. 

In Italy, French intervention had only made permanent 
the subjection of the peninsula to foreign masters, but 
beyond the Rhine her policy was triumphant. The imperial 
authority had for a moment been increased by Charles V. 
to the point of exciting a fear lest he should stifle with one 
blow both the political and the religious liberties of the states 
of the Empire. France aided the German princes to defend 
themselves, and the Peace of Augsburg guaranteed at once 
their independence and the triumph of Protestantism (1555) . 
To Germany this was a misfortune, perpetuating her dis- 
union. But from the point of view of France it was an 
advantage. The acquisition of Italy was no adequate com- 
pensation to the house of Austria. Poor but vigorous, 
Germany would have aided its master to secure the dominion 



320 GOVERNMENT OF FRANCIS I. AND HENRY II. 

of Europe ; but exhausted Italy only itnpoverislied its for- 
eign master. 
Internal Political Results ; Increase of the Royal Power, — 

The sixteenth century presents a singular contrast. The 
spirit of revolt was everywhere abroad, in the arts, in litera- 
ture, in philosophy, and in religion. In everything but 
politics there was a desire for complete innovation. The 
royal power alone continued its upward progress, and the 
Italian wars consolidated the absolute power of kings by 
making all the great states military monarchies. In France 
the nation, in the face of danger, had rallied around its king, 
the symbol of its national unity and independence, and the 
training of the nobility to subordination, begun by Louis 
XI. upon the scaffold, was completed by his successors in 
the camp. 

Francis I. entered fully upon absolute power. " The king's 
good pleasure" could no longer be resisted, now that he had 
at his disposal a permanent army and the entire fortune of 
the country. "France," said a Venetian ambassador, "is 
the most united country in the world." And he added, 
" There the king's will is everything, even in the administra- 
tion of justice ; for there is no one who dares to obey his own 
conscience by gainsaying the monarch." With Francis I. 
begins the ancien regime; that is to say, a government in 
which the subjects had no guarantee against even the most 
iniquitous oppression, and the prince no obstacle to his will, 
even when most capricious. 

Transformation of Feudalism. — In the middle of the six- 
teenth century there remained only one great feudal house, — 
that of Bourbon-Navarre, whose head, Antoine de Bourbon, 
was personally insignificant. At a lower grade there were 
still great lords, — the Montmorencys, the Guises, the La 
Tremouilles, the Chdtillons, etc., — but no more great vassals. 
Where the lords had retained their fiefs, they were watched 
with a jealous eye by the baillis and seneschals of the king, 
who repressed violence while the parliaments prosecuted 
crime. 

If any remote province escaped from this double surveil- 
lance, royal commissioners went to it and held assizes, at 
which every complaint was received, and rigorous justice 
immediately executed. The lords still had many privileges 
of justice, and rights of vassalage highly burdensome to the 
people; but they no longer administered the government, 



GOVERNMENT OF FRANCIS I. AND HENRY II. 321 

they did not coin money, they did not make laws, they did 
not make war : in a word, they had no longer any political 
power, except by entering into the service of the king. 
Reduced to revenues and titles, they were no longer the 
feudal body ; they were the French noblesse. 

The Clergy. — The concordat of 1516 had made the clergy 
dependent upon the king. The ordinance of Villers-Cot- 
terets, in 1539, checked the encroachments of the episcopal 
courts upon the royal courts by restricting their sphere to 
spiritual or ecclesiastical causes. At the same time Francis 
raised from the clergy large contributions which were only 
in name voluntary. 

The Third Estate. — The Third Estate had for a long time 
been reduced to complete obedience. Content to grow rich 
through the good order which absolutism secured, they no 
longer desired the old communal liberties, and did not yet 
seek liberty of the modern type. But the " gentlemen of 
the robe" had in their possession four important official 
charges, — that of chancellor, that of the secretaries of 
state, that of the presidents, counsellors, judges, and other 
officers of justice, and that of the treasurers, tax-gatherers, 
and other financial officers. 

The Parliaments ; the States-General. — By their learning, 
their permanent tenure, and the consideration in which they 
were held, the magistracy had acquired an importance which 
easily suggested to them the idea of playing a greater part 
in the state. Entrenched in the nine parliaments of Aix, 
Bordeaux, Dijon, Grenoble, Paris, Rennes, Eouen, Toulouse, 
and Dombes, not subject to removal, having almost a hered- 
itary tenure by reason of the purchase of offices, the gentle- 
men of the robe had already two essentially political rig-hts, — 
that of remonstrance against royal ordinances, and that of 
registration, without which no act of the royal will had the 
force of law. Francis I. destroyed this last guarantee in 
1527, forbidding the Parliament of Paris "to meddle in 
affairs of state or in any other matters save those of justice." 
The magistracy submitted. They did more ; the president 
of the Parliament of Paris openly declared that the king 
was above the law ; he contented himself with adding that 
the king's will ought to be regulated by equity and reason. 

Though subdued separatelj^, the three estates might re- 
gain their strength by union, Francis I. was careful not 
to convoke the States-General. Henry II. also avoided 



322 GOVERNMENT OF FRANCIS I. AND HENRY II. 

bringing the deputies of tlie nation face to face with an 
extravagant court. After the battle of St. Quentin it 
became necessary to gather togetlier at least an assembly of 
notables, in which the clergy and Third Estate made the 
most patriotic sacrifices. 

General Administration. — Descending from the feudal 
times, the great officers of the court, such as the constable, 
still retained a share in the administration. But in the 
sixteenth century began what was soon to be the omnipo- 
tence of ministers. The secretaries of state were charged 
with the king's correspondence in all public affairs. An 
ordinance of Henry II., in 1547, fixed their number at four ; 
each of them corresponded with one-fourth of the provinces 
of the kingdom, and with one-fourth of the foreign coun- 
tries. Specialization of their functions is of a later date. 
Thus all the affairs of the king's household, and at a later 
time ecclesiastical affairs, were assigned to one of them, 
and in the seventeenth century the three others successively 
received charge of war, of foreign affairs, and of the navy. 
The chancellor was head of the department of justice ; the 
superintendent, of that of finance. The organization of the 
police began. 

Army, Navy, and Colonies. — Only the gendarmerie was 
Freni'h ; the infantry was composed mainly of foreigners, 
Germans or Swiss. In 1534 Francis I., resuming the idea 
of Charles VII., attempted to create a national infantry, 
organizing seven legions of six thousand men each. Henry 
II. resumed and improved his father's plan ; but the civil 
wars disorganized everything. Eichelieu and Louis XIV. 
reconstituted this national infantry. Francis made the 
office of grand master of the artillery one of the first offices 
of state, placed ten frontier provinces under military gov- 
ernors, began a double line of frontier fortifications, and 
imported from Italy the use of earthworks. 

Francis also maintained a genuine navy. He equipped 
galleys upon the Mediterranean, on which the French flag 
was supreme, and larger vessels, propelled by both sails and 
oars, upon the ocean. The colonial movement which was 
to change the face of the world was then beginning. The 
Basques, Bretons, and Normans had established fisheries at 
Newfoundland as early as 1502. The navigator Verrazano 
ex]3lored in 1524, by order of Francis I., the coasts of North 
America ; in 1535 Jacques Cartier entered the St. Lawrence 



GOVERNMENT OF FRANCIS I. AND HENRY 11. 323 

and discovered Canada. The merchant marine was con- 
stantly increasing. 

Finance. — A more complicated administration, more 
numerous armies, the new navy, and the luxury of the 
court required enormous sums. Francis I. united his pri- 
vate treasury with that of the nation. He accustomed the 
clergy of France to furnish him with a regular subsidy. 
He increased the failles from 7,0.00,000 to 16,000,000, and 
added to the gabelle or salt-tax. In 1522 he i)orrowed 
200,000 livres (to-day, a million dollars), at eight and one- 
half per cent., thus originating the public debt of France. 
The same year he added a fourth chamber to the Parliament 
of Paris, in order to obtain 1,200,000 livres, and afterward 
renewed several times these sales of judicial, financial, and 
administrative offices — a disastrous measure, which need- 
lessly increased the number of the king's servants, dimin- 
ished the number of persons subject to taxation, and made 
the administration of justice more expensive to the people. 
A still more unfortunate measure, borrowed from Italy, was 
the establishment of the royal lottery (1539). The princi- 
pal author of the most severely criticised measures of the 
reign of Francis I. was Chancellor Duprat. 

The financial administration of Henry II. was disastrous ; 
he negotiated so many of those loans at ruinous rates of 
interest which his father had inaugurated, that he left a 
debt of 17,000,000, equal to 136,000,000 of the present time. 
Francis I. increased the duties on imports; under Henry 
II. all imported goods without distinction were, on entrance 
into the kingdom, subjected to a duty of two crowns per 
quintal, and of four per cent, ad valorem: such were the 
modest beginnings of the protective system. 

General Prosperity. — Yet the general wealth increased 
faster than the public expenses. The agriculturists bor- 
rowed from Italy the cultivation of maize. Two Genoese 
in 1536 established the first manufactories of silk at Lyons, 
and the same city founded a commercial bank. Thus, over 
against the landed wealth of the lords, was gradually form- 
ing the personal wealth of the bourgeois. Capital, the 
great power of modern times, was beginning to be amassed 
in the hands of the merchants. 



324 THE RENAISSANCE 



CHAPTER XLII. 

THE RENAISSANCE UNDER FRANCIS I. AND HENRY II. 

The Renaissance. — The Middle Ages were dying. The 
minds of men, still held by the thousand bonds of old ideas, 
were struggling to be free. To this revolt against the old 
systems has been given the appropriate name of the Re- 
naissance. It was the radiant awakening of human reason, 
the springtime of the mind. After a long and severe winter 
the earth was reviving under the sun of renovation. All was 
renewed, — arts, sciences, and philosophy, — ■ and the world 
began to march forward, to mount into purer light and air. 
" Oh, age ! " cried Ulrich von Hutten, " letters flourish, the 
minds of men are reawakened; it is a joy to be- alive ! " 

The distinguishing characteristic of this revolution was 
that the men of that age looked back into the past more 
than into the future. If they abandoned the masters whom 
they had hitherto been following, it was to set themselves 
under the instruction of older masters. But to go back to 
antiquity was to return to human nature, to the beautiful, 
to the true, to the independence of the mind and the rule of 
rationality. 

The Renaissance of Art. — When the French crossed over 
the mountains, Italy was giving birth to a new art. In 
architecture, the right angle, the arch, the dome, strong and 
full columns, restrained ornamentation of Greek and Eoman 
origin, tastefully mingled with others, were replacing the 
acute angle, the pointed arch, the light columns, and the 
lavish ornamentation of the last age of Gothic architecture. 
The sculptor worked in the open air, attempted all subjects, 
studied the nude, and especially studied antiquitj', master- 
pieces of which were every day being discovered. The 
painter obtained a new beauty of coloring, a new variety of 
tones. Michael Angelo was finishing the dome of St. Peter, 
chiselling his great statue of Moses, or painting his Last 
Judgment; Eaphael was producing his School of Athens, 
his Dispute of the Holy Sacrament, and his divine Ma- 
donnas. 



UNDER FRANCIS I. AND HENRY 11. 325 

France was far behind in painting. But in arcMtecture 
and in sculpture she had, of herself, entered into these new- 
paths. Eoger Ango had already begun the Palais de Jus- 
tice at Rouen ; others were building at Paris the chapel of 
the Hdtel de Cluny, the H6tel de la Tremouille, and many 
other town houses there and in the provincial capitals. 
Sculpture did not linger behind her elder sister : as witness, 
the tomb of George of Amboise at Eouen, and that of Fran- 
cis II. of Brittany at Nantes, the work of Michel Colombe. 
Thus a genuinely Prench art was being formed, which in 
order to develop into the fulness of the Renaissance needed 
only a little more lightness, grace, and richness, a little more 
of anatomical and architectural science ; and especially the 
restrained caprice, the regulated fancy, which was one of 
the signs of those times, in which man was recovering the 
freedom of his mind. France, therefore, does not owe 
everything to Francis I. ; but artistic talents received from 
him a liberal and powerful protection. From the Italy 
of Raphael and Michael Angelo, Francis I. borrowed both 
masters and models. He bought in Italy, or received as 
gifts, more than a hundred statues ; he acquired paint- 
ings of Leonardo and Raphael. By his regard and by his 
friendship, quite as much as by his favors, he attracted the 
most distinguished masters from Italy, among them old 
Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, and Benvenuto Cel- 
lini, to build chA{;eaux for him or decorate his palaces, to 
inspire the French artists or excite their emulation. 

Fontainehleau ; St. Germain ; Chambord ; Chenonceaux. — 
Tlie sight of the sumptuous palaces and elegant villas of 
Italy had revealed to the French the coldness and barren- 
ness of the gloomy manor-houses which their fathers had 
inhabited. A new society was forming. The brilliant court 
of great lords and young ladies, of poets and artists, required 
new dwellings. Francis I. provided them. He built in the 
pleasant valley of the Loire, the favorite region of the Valois, 
the chateau of Chambord and that of Azay-le-Rideau, com- 
menced Chenonceaux, and finished Amboise. Fontainebleau 
rose in the midst of the most beautiful forest in France. It 
bears traces of the influence of the Italian artists, but is an 
agglomeration of constructions of all sorts and periods. 
Chambord has more unity, and is entirely French in its 
origin. It was an architect of Blois, Pierre ISTepveu, who 
built that marvellous edifice, so elegant yet so majestic. 



326 THE RENAISSANCE 

After Chambord may be mentioned Chenonceaux, the vast 
chateau of Usse, St. Germain, Madrid, in the Bois de Bou- 
logne, Folembray near Laon, Villers-Cotterets, and the nu- 
merous chateaux which the great nobles, following the 
examples of the kings, erected in place of their old castles. 

Pierre Lescot and the Louvre. — These chateaux were only 
summer residences ; grander and more severe buildings, des- 
tined to be the official residence of royalty, were erected in 
the capital by French artists. Pierre Lescot (1510-1571) 
produced the plan of the Louvre. On the ruins of the old 
Louvre rose gradually that palace which, in spite of all trans- 
formations, is still the completest expression of the French 
Renaissance. Pierre Lescot constructed only a part of the 
facade. On the exterior, the basement with its Corinthian 
columns, the first story with a composite order, the sec- 
ond with an Ionic order, are bound one to the other by the 
beautiful and graceful sculptures of Jean Goujon and Paul 
Ponce, surmounted by a bold central pavilion. Such is the 
theme that other artists and other centuries have developed ; 
and the decadence of monumental art in France may be fol- 
lowed by studying the parts of this palace. 

Philibert Delorme. — The second of the great French 
architects, Philibert Delorme, had crossed the Alps in 1534 
to study on the spot the monuments of antiquity and the 
palaces of the Renaissance. On his return to his native 
city of Lyons, Cardinal du Bellay attracted him to Paris 
and introduced him to Henry II. He continued Fontaine- 
bleau, planned various chateaux, and obtained from Cathe- 
rine de' Medici the office of superintendent of buildings. 
The daughter of the Medici had brought from Tuscany a 
taste for letters and art. Philibert Delonne, in one of his 
writings, commends her "for the extreme pleasure which 
she takes in architecture, drawing and designing plans and 
profiles of the buildings which she causes to be erected." 
It was by her orders that he commenced in 1564 the chateau 
of the Tuileries, of which the communists of 1871 made a 
heap of ruins. The middle pavilion, the two adjoining gal- 
leries with their arcaded porticos rising into two square 
pavilions of an Ionic and a Corinthian order, one above the 
other, were the work of Philibert Delorme. Subsequent 
architects altered his plans for the worse. Louis XIV. 
undertook to unite the work of Pierre Lescot with that of 
Philibert Delorme by continuing the gallery of the Louvre 
till it reached the Tuileries. 



UNDER FRANCIS I. AND HENRY II. 327 

Goujon ; Pilon ; Cousin ; Palissy. — Jean Goujon, who has 
been called the Correggio of sculpture, united knowledge 
of anatomy with delicacy of chiselling, force with grace. 
His most remarkable works are the caryatids of the hall of 
the guards at the Louvre, the delightful figures of the foun- 
tain of the Innocents, and a group of Diana the Huntress. 
Of the works of Germain Pilon the most famous are the 
sculptures of the mausoleum of Henry II. at St. Denis, and 
the group of the Three Graces, carved from a single block 
of marble. 

Jean Cousin, born in 1501, was also a great sculptor ; but 
he Avas unrivalled in France in the sixteenth century for 
stained glass windows and oil paintings. The windows 
which he made for Sens, Metz, and Vincennes are placed 
in the first rank. His canvas of the Last Judgment, now 
in the museum of the Louvre, is a composition full of fire 
and originality. 

Beside these great names a place should be found for the 
heroic Bernard Palissy, the potter, born in Agenois about 
1500, who, after sixteen years of efforts and ruinous ex- 
penses, discovered (1555) the secret of the enamel which 
was used in Italy, made potteries which are still admired, 
and was in geology the precursor of Buffon and Cuvier. 

The Revival of Letters. — In the fifteenth century literary 
studies were mostly confined to the subtleties of scholasti- 
cism, taught in barbarous Latin. The sciences, without 
true method, went on at haphazard, delivered over to super- 
stitious practices. The French language was simple and 
vivid, but lacked amplitude, elevation, and clearness. Gallic 
imagination, good sense, and gayety made themselves felt in 
, writings both of verse and of prose ; but trivialit}^, diffusive- 
ness, and bad taste disfigured the best books. Fortunately 
the artists were not the only ones to rediscover antiquity. 
The writers also drew from that abundant source. 

The CDllege of France and the Royal Printers. — In letters, 
also, Francis I. did not create the movement, but he aided 
it. The old University of Paris with its faculty of theology, 
the Sorbonne, could not change its spirit and its methods. 
After the model of the Italian academies, the king founded 
in 1530 a lay establishment, the College of the Three Lan- 
guages, or College of France. Hebrew, Greek, Latin, medi- 
cine, mathematics, philosophy, all that was new or that 
opened new paths was there taught gratuitously by the 
greatest scholars of France. 



328 THE RENAISSANCE 

Francis I. did not create the Eoyal Printing-Office, which 
dates only from the time of Louis XIII. (1640) ; but he 
caused to be cast, after the beautiful forms of the Venetian 
types of Aldus Manutius, the fonts of Garamond, who, at 
his orders, entrusted them to the most distinguished print- 
ers, the so-called royal printers, to serve for the handsome 
editions published by these private establishments. He 
bought manuscripts of ancient authors in Italy, Greece, and 
Asia, to increase the riches of the royal library, and caused 
a great number to be edited. The family of the Estiennes 
acquired a just celebrity by the beauty and correctness of 
the works emanating from their presses. 

Erudition. — Dan^s, Postel, Dolet, the great Ciceronian, 
Bude, the greatest Hellenist of Europe, Lefebvre d'Etaples, 
and tAventy others edited with notes and commentaries a 
large number of works of sacred and profane antiquity. 
Erudite publications, though so foreign, it might seem, to 
the life of every day, in reality put into circulation ideas, 
results of learning, and forms of style which were to renew 
the entire literature of France. Already some even went 
further and looked beyond Greece and Rome. Postel visited 
Asia, and learned Hebrew, Arabic, and Armenian. Glimpses 
of the ancient East were obtained. This contact with an- 
tiquity animated and strengthened the French mind. It 
now had models and guides, which it had lacked before, 
and could commence its first great literary age. 

Jurisprudence. — The study which in the sixteenth cen- 
tury advanced beyond all others was that of law. The 
Italian Alciati, called to Bourges in 1529 by Francis I., 
applied philology to the study of law ; his disciples went 
further. The erudite Cujas restored the text of the Roman 
jurisconsults and founded the fruitful science of the history " 
of law. Pierre Pithou, Denis Godefroy, who published his 
Corpus Juris in 1596, the profound Doneau, Francois Hot- 
man, rendered still other services ; and he whom his contem- 
poraries called the prince of jurisconsults, Dumoulin, advo- 
cate of the Parliament of Paris, brought light out of the 
dark chaos of the customs. Thanks to the efforts of these 
learned scholars, men like Ollivier, Michel de I'Hdpital, Har- 
lay, and De Thou, profound jurisconsults or austere magis- 
trates, Avere able, in the midst of the most frightful religious 
discords, to improve the civil law and prepare the way for 
the rational unification of French law. 



UNDER FRANCIS I. AND HENRY II. 329 

Philosophy ; Medicine ; Science. — The Middle Ages had 
no knowledge of Plato ; Aristotle reigned alone. Ramus, 
a deep student of Plato, was the lirst in Prance to shake off 
the yoke of this superstitious admiration. To combat Aris- 
totle with Plato Avas to substitute one authority in the place 
of another ; but between the two masters, the mind could 
go on and seek truth for itself, instead of receiving it ready 
made from their ha,nds. 

The reading of the works of Hippocrates and Galen 
brought back medicine to experience and observation. 
Ambroise Par6 became the father of French surgery, aban- 
doning the false treatment of gunshot wounds by iDoiling 
oil, and replacing the cauterization of arteries by the use of 
ligatures. 

In the sciences, France has in this century one great 
name, that of Vi^te, the predecessor of Descartes and 
ISTewton in mathematical analysis. Vi^te was the real in- 
ventor of the applications of algebra to geometry. 

Prose Literature. — Literature could not remain uninflu- 
enced by this renaissance which was so brilliantly develop- 
ing in the domains of art and science. But, with the 
exception of the Essays of Montaigne, the substance was 
of more excellence than the form. The century did much 
thinking, but literary skill was in general wanting. The 
Life of the Chevalier Bayard, by the Loyal Serviteur, seems 
like the last echo of the naive chronicles of the Middle 
Ages. The Memoirs of the brothers Du Bellay are instruc- 
tive. Those of Blaise de Montluc were called by Henry IV. 
the soldiers' Bible. Many others relate what they have 
done or seen, and France was to have, in their memoirs, 
one of the most interesting branches of historical lit- 
erature. President de Thou (d. 1617) takes a higher 
flight in his vast and conscientious Universal Historj'- ; 
Brantdme descends lower, to anecdote. Brantdme con- 
ducts us to the Novels of the Queen of Navarre (d. 1549), 
imitations of the Decameron of Boccaccio. A young man 
of eighteen, Etienne de la Boetie, found energetic and 
burning words in which to denounce tyranny. A little 
later, Jean Bodin (b. 1530), in his book on the Eepublic, 
that is, on the organization of the state, made an important 
study of political science. Michel Eyquem, born in 1533, 
at the chateau of Montaigne, in Southwestern France, was 
for five years the mayor of Bordeaux. But he cared little 



330 - THE RENAISSANCE 

for affairs, and returned to liis chateau. Montaigne's Es- 
says are, through the charm of their style and the delicacy 
of their thought, the most instructive and the most attrac- 
tive moral study of man ; but they have not the well-rounded 
design, the firm drawing, and the relentless logic of minds 
attached to a strong political or religious creed. He is un- 
certain respecting many things. But if the opinions of men 
inspire him with doubts, he has no doubts respecting virtue ; 
but his virtue is pleasant, and not austere. Montaigne goes 
on, across " fertile and flourishing plains," and on the road 
he imitates the " bees which pillage the flowers on this side 
and on that ; but they afterwards make of it honey which 
is all their own: it is no longer either thyme or marjoram." 
Thus he utters thoughts and images which he encounters in 
ancient authors : he seeks his plunder everywhere, but makes 
what he takes his own. The Essays of Montaigne had been 
preceded by a translation of the historical and moral works 
of Plutarch, by Amyot (1513-1593) ; a translation full of 
genius, and which infused into French literature all the 
ancient knowledge which the philosopher of Chseroneia had 
gathered into his books. 

The Middle Ages could not give place to the Renaissance 
without a struggle. The old spirit changed reluctantly 
into the new. In the works of Francois Rabelais (1483- 
1553) we may see this strange and picturesque conflict in 
progress. Born at Chinon, at first a cordelier, then a phy- 
sician, and finally cur6 of Meudon, Rabelais, in his Life of 
Gargantua and of Pantagruel, as in his own life, presents a 
chaos of the most discordant elements, not yet harmo- 
niously fused. His book, in which reason speaks the lan- 
guage of folly, in which the most boisterous laughter is but 
a terrible satire, unites in a strange beauty the boldest 
thought of the Renaissance with the most grotesque forms 
which the Middle Ages could ever have imagined. 

Drama and Poetry. — By an edict of 1548 Parliament 
had destroyed the old Mysteries. The popular satirical 
drama had just reached its culmination. For some time 
men were amused by the transparent allusions through 
which it was easy to recognize the people, the Church, 
and, sometimes, types less general and known personages. 
The Parliament made an end of this pleasure also, by for- 
bidding all persons "to exhibit any spectacle noting any 
person whatsoever." The popular drama was not perfected 



UNDER FRANCIS I. AND HENRY II. 331 

by the Kenaissance, but set aside. Certain erudite poets 
had already translated Greek and Latin pieces into French 
verse. Jodelle composed the first regular French tragedy, 
his Cleopatra, Avhich was played in the presence of Henry 
II. in 1552. The modern theatre then received its birth 
before an audience of courtiers. Ancient history drove the 
Bible from the stage : the human drama took the place of the 
religious drama. But the French theatre long retained, from 
antiquity and the court in which it originated, certain traces 
of the traditional and the conventional, which prevented it 
from acquiring the original popularity of the Mysteries. 

The poets did not abdicate so quickly. Clement Marot 
(d. 1544) brought poetry to the court. The court gave it 
more delicacy and elegance, without taking from it its 
vigor or its maliciousness. A page of Francis I., Marot 
fought with him at Pavia, and was taken prisoner. A 
translator of the Psalms of David, he was accused of shar- 
ing the new opinions, was several times persecuted, and 
died at Turin in misery. His verses are all wit and grace, 
but have little strength. The strength which French poetry 
lacked, Ponsard .attempted to impart to it, by making it 
Latin and Greek, and he Avasted in this useless effort his 
true sensibility of sou.1 and the real power of his genius. 
He borroAved from the a,ncients not only the form of the 
ode and the epic, their ideas and their metaphors, but the 
very construction of the phrase and the composition of 
the words. In his Franciade he aspired to equal Homer 
and Virgil, and his age, infatuated with antiquities, almost 
agreed with him. The most illustrious scholars, the most 
judicious minds, Scaliger and De Thou, had displayed a 
sort of adoration for him. But little of Eonsard has re- 
mained current, except some few Avell-turned verses. Yet 
his language has more of elevation and of nobility, or, to 
speak more truly, of solemnity, than that of his prede- 
cessors. He was the originator of the sublime style. 

Ponsard had gathered around him a society of poets, 
which he called, in reminiscence of the Alexandrine poets, 
the Pleiad. They were six in number : Du Bellay, Baif, 
Belleau, Jodelle, Jamyn, and Pontus de Thiard. Another 
of his disciples, Du Bartas, showed by his very exaggera- 
tion, in his Semaine de la Creation, the folly of these inno- 
vators who were constantly looking backward. Finally 
Malherbe came to open the great age of French literature, 
the seventeenth centurv. 



ELEVENTH PERIOD. 

Eeligious Wars. — Feudal and Communal 
Anarchy renewed. 



CHAPTER XLHI. 

FRANCIS II. 
(1559-1560 A.D.) 

The Children of Henry II. — Henry II., at his death, left 
four sons of tender age, the children of Catherine de' Medici. 
Born sickly and early exhausted by excesses, three of them 
quickly succeeded one another on tlie throne without leav- 
ing issue, so that during a quarter of a century the burden 
of absolute poAver, so difficult to bear, fell into the bands of 
children or of inexperienced young men. They lived long 
enough to exhibit good qualities of mind and great faults 
of heart. Tliey Avere eloquent speakers, poets to some 
extent, and always patrons of letters and arts, but they had 
vices which are fatal to states. The eldest, Francis II., 
reigned less than a year and a half. 

Catherine de' Medici. — The king's majority began at 
thirteen years of age ; but at sixteen, Francis II. was still 
under tutelage. The queen-mother Avas called upon to exer- 
cise great influence. She was intelligent but superstitious, 
full of taste for the fine arts and for delicate pleasures, but 
without much strictness of morality. She had hitherto 
given proof only of patience and address. Transported 
suddenly from court circles into political factions and wars, 
she was not equal to her new position. She carried the 
finesse of the drawing-room into the affairs of the State. 
She had a taste for underhand dealings. She wished to 



FRANCIS II. 333 

rule men through their evil passions, to oppose parties one 
to another. All distinction between good and evil was 
effaced from her mind ; she had left in her heart only one 
good feeling, her affection for her children. In order to 
secure power for her sons she was willing to use every 
means. So abandoned a policy was sure to receive its 
punishment. 

Mary Stuart. — Mary Stuart, daughter of James V., and 
wife of Francis II., for a time kept power from Catherine's 
hands. In that brilliant court of France, in the midst of 
the scholars, poets, and artists, who always gathered about 
her, Mary was enjoying Avithout misgiving the pleasure of 
exercising the charms of her wit and beauty. Her influence 
over the king was great ; she left all affairs of business to 
her two uncles, the Cardinal of Lorraine and Duke Francis 
of Guise. 

The Aspirants for Power. — The house of Guise, the 
younger branch of the ducal house of Lorraine, had risen 
rapidly of late. Claude, its head, became Duke of Guise ; 
his brother Jean was made a cardinal. Of his sons, the 
eldest, Francis, had defended Metz and reconquered Calais; 
another, Charles, had succeeded his uncle as cardinal. The 
young king confided military affairs to the former, civil 
aifairs to the latter. Catherine de' Medici had, however, 
the titular office of " general superintendent of the govern- 
ment." The house of Bourbon then had, as its heads, 
Antoine, who had married Jeanne d'Albret, now queen of 
Navarre ; and his two brothers, Charles, cardinal of Bour- 
bon, and Louis, prince of Conde. They were the nearest 
relatives of the Valois ; and Antoine, in case of a minorit}^, 
could have laid claim to the regency ; but at present the 
Bourbons asked for nothing. Montmorency was relieved 
of the burden of olfice. 

Calvin ; Progress of the Reformation. — Only forty years 
had elapsed since Luther began his preaching against the 
Church, and already Europe was divided into two com- 
munions. England, Scotland, Sweden, Demnark, half of 
Germany and Switzerland had separated from Rome; the 
South, Italy and Spain, were still obedient. The Reforma- 
tion would be triumphant if France went over to it. 

Under Francis I. and Henry II., the Sorbonne had con- 
demned the new opinions. Parliament had forbidden preach- 
ing in the country districts and threatened the heretics with 



334 FBAIf^CIS 11. 

death. Though the government relied on the Protestants 
in other countries, it made no concession to those at home. 

Hitherto the reformers of France had been without a 
guide; Calvin had placed himself at their head. He was 
born in 1509, at ISToyon. Having become acquainted with 
the Lutheran opinions at the university of Bourges, he 
adopted them with some modifications, and expounded and 
defended them in a clear and methodical work which he 
called The Christian Institution. In it he attacked the 
primacy of the Holy See, the real presence, etc. After 
much wandering he established himself at Geneva, where 
he gained unbounded influence. From 1541 to 1565, he 
ruled there as an absolute master, regulating doctrines and 
severely reforming manners. Under the hands of this stern 
lawgiver the Reformation in France took definite shape ; 
it went farther than that of Luther, for it denied absolutely 
the re?J presence, and proscribed as abominations all the 
splendors of the Catholic worship. The French Reforma- 
tion identified itself with Calvinism, and Geneva became 
the Rome of Protestantism. The Calvinists or Huguenots 
increased in the midst of persecution. The council of Trent 
(1545), the new religious order of the Company of Jesus, 
created expressly to combat heresy, were powerless to ar- 
rest its progress. This is the explanation of the unlooked- 
for treaty of Cateau-Cambresis. The two kings felt them- 
selves impelled to make peace in order to arrest the prog- 
ress of the reformers. By a secret convention, or at least 
by formal promises, Philip II. and Henry II. agreed to 
extirpate heresy. 

Punishment of Anne Dubourg. — Henry immediately pub- 
lished the edict of Ecouen, which pronounced sentence of 
death against the Protestants and their abettors. Two 
members of the Parliament, Dufaur and Anne Dubourg, did 
not conceal their sympathy with the persecuted. The king 
considered himself insulted and defied ; he had them arrested 
at once, and commanded that they should be brought to 
trial. His death did not stop the trial. The ministers of 
the Reformed Church held their first national synod at 
Paris to draw up a petition in favor of the prisoners. But 
Dubourg was burned in the Place de Grdve. 

Power of the Reformed Party ; Political Discontent. — 
Nevertheless, the reformers proceeded to organize. They 
formed a union of their churches, and established relations 



FRANCIS II. 335 

with the German Protestants. The party grew large by the 
addition, not only of religious, biit of political opponents, — 
the princes of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon and Cond6, 
the great nobles, disgusted at the rule of foreigners. The 
lesser nobles of the provinces, resenting the loss of their 
privileges, abolished by royalty, inclined, through political 
discontent, to the new theological views. The austere and 
independent doctrines of Calvinism suited them ; and some 
of them could not help thinking of the rich domains of the 
Church which the German and English lords had secular- 
ized, of the possible recovery of their lost privileges, and 
united to break down the new constitutional arrangements. 

Conspiracy of Amboise (1560). — The two Guises exer- 
cised power with arrogance and partiality. They disbanded 
the old military organizations in which a niimber of poor 
gentlemen had served unpaid, and replaced them by Ger- 
mans and Italians. This summary fashion of settling ac- 
counts roused the indignation of many men, who, unable 
to excite civil war, engaged in a plot. They believed they 
could count on the two Bourbons ; they were at least sure 
of Cond^, and they thought that it would be easy to draw 
on the three Ch^tillons, nephews of Montmorency : one 
of them, cardinal-bishop of Beauvais ; another, Coligny, 
admiral of France, and long an enemy of Duke Francis ; 
the third, Dandelot, colonel-general of the infantry. They 
proposed to take the king aAvay from the Guises. Cond6 
was secretly the chief; but the enterprise was conducted 
by La Renaudie, a gentleman of Limousin. A number of 
Huguenots were to proceed to the court at Blois, and de- 
mand religious liberty ; La Eenaudie should follow with 
five hundred gentlemen and a thousand soldiers. But a 
lawyer, who had at first approved the design, was led by 
his fears to reveal it. 

Francis of Guise removed the court to the castle of 
Amboise, which was more easily defended, summoned thither 
Conde and the Ch^tillons, and suspended the prosecutions 
of the reformers, so as to divide his adversaries. La 
Eenaudie advanced upon Amboise, but was surprised and 
killed. The Duke of Guise, appointed lieutenant-general of 
the kingdom with unlimited powers, showed himself merci- 
less ; and for a month there was continual beheading, hang- 
ing, and drowning. 

Cond6 was compromised by the confessions of several of 



336 FRANCIS 11. 

the prisoners. ISTo one doubted that he was the author 
of the movement. But he haughtily demanded a solemn 
assembly of the princes, and defied to single combat who- 
ever should dare to accuse him. The Duke of Guise had 
not sufficient proofs ; unable to put him to death, he as- 
sumed the part of a protector ; he offered to be his second ; 
seeing this, no one ventured to take up the challenge. 

The Chancellor de I'Hopital; the Edict of Romorantin 
(1560). — The Guises had gained a Pyrrhic victory. So 
many executions for so unsubstantial a conspiracy excited 
general horror. It caused the death of the chancellor 
Olivier. Mary Stuart had not interfered. But the young 
king had wept, and had called men to witness that the 
blame lay upon his uncles, and not upon himself. The 
queen-mother had perceived "that there had been in the 
whole matter more of discontent than of Huguenotism." 
She gave the seals to Michel de I'Hdpital, "one of those 
noble souls of the antique type, another Cato the Censor." 
The Guises, elated by success, demanded the introduction of 
the Inquisition pure and simple. L'H6pital refused. He 
caused (May, 1560) the edict of Romorantin to be issued, 
which gave cognizance of the crime of heresy to the bishops' 
courts ; but this was far preferable to the establishment of 
the terrible Inquisition. 

Preparations for Civil War. — L'H6pital convoked an 
assembly of notables at Fontainebleau. Coligny rej)aired 
thither, and presented to the king the petition of the 
Huguenots of Normandy, who prayed for liberty of con- 
science. But it was decided to await the meeting of the 
States-General in December (1560). There was urgent 
need that the voice of the nation should be heard above 
the tumult of rival ambitions and opposing creeds. The 
Guises, allying themselves with the merciless king of Spain, 
assembled an army. The Bourbons and the Ch4tillons raised 
companies of gentlemen, and organized resistance in the 
South. 

The Arrest of Conde; Death of Francis II. (1560).— The 
States-General met at Orleans. The king of Navarre and 
the prince of Conde attended. The Guises caused Cond^ 
to be arrested as soon as he entered the city, and sought to 
have his brother killed in the king's antechamber. But the 
young prince dared not give the signal, A standing com- 
mittee was nominated to try Conde ; his fate was predeter- 



FRANCIS II. 337 

mined ; he was condemned to death, and would have 
perished but for L'Hdpital, who refused to sign the sen- 
tence, and thus gained time, for the young king was dying. 
He expired December 5th, after a reign of seventeen months. 
France would soon have forgotten this unfortunate young 
man but for two memories associated with his reign : one that 
of the power of the Guises and the beginning of the wars 
of religion ; the other that of the young Mary Stuart, who 
was obliged after the death of her husband to renounce the 
land of her adoption and return to wild Scotland. She re- 
turned to find a crown indeed, but also chains, — a captivity 
of eighteen years, and instead of a throne at last the scaffold. 



338 CHARLES IX. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

CHARLES IX. 
(1560-1574 A.D.) 

Regency of Catherine de' Medici; the States-General of 
Orleans (1560) . — Power fell into the hands of the queen- 
mother, her second son, Charles IX., being only ten years 
and a half old. She renounced the policy of extreme meas- 
ures, confirmed the Guises in their oifices, but appointed 
Antoine de Bourbon lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and 
freed Condd. Her principal counsellor was L'Hdpital. The 
latter purposed civil reforms. Catherine hoped to oppose 
parties one to another. 

The States-General did not render the assistance that 
L'H6pital expected from them. The debt amounted to 
42,480,000 livres, which would be equivalent to 350,000,000 
francs to-day; the net revenues did not amount to 12,260,- 
000 francs. The nobility made no grant ; the clergy, since 
the time of Prancis I., almost annually made a grant of 
tenths ; it consented further to furnish a free gift of 1,600,- 
000 livres for six years, and in ten years to redeem a con- 
siderable amount of the debt. As for the Third Estate, 
which bore all the weight of taxation, it demanded a reduc- 
tion, the abolition of the venality of olfices and internal 
customs, the convocation of the states every five years. 
On the religious question the three orders were divided. 
The clergy desired the extermination of heresy ; the Third 
Estate was for religious freedom ; the nobility was divided. 

Measures of L'Hopital; Ordinance of Orleans (1561). — 
The chancellor acted resolutely. He re-established equilib- 
rium between the expenditures and the receipts. Eoyal 
letters enjoined it upon Parliament to suspend all the pros- 
ecutions in matters of religion. The celebrated ordinance 
of Orleans re-established canonical elections, forbade the 
clergy to exact fees for administering the sacraments, com- 
pelled them to reside in their benefices, and transferred the 
administration of justice from baillis and seneschals, gen- 



CHARLES IX. 339 

erally soldiers and ignorant of the law, to deputies who 
should be either lawyers or magistrates. 

The Edict of July; States of Pontoise; Conference of 
Poissy (1561). — L'Hdpital continued his conciliatory pol- 
icy. While declaring the meetings for preaching unlawful 
by the edict of July, he granted a general amnesty and sus- 
pended the execution of all sentences in matters of religion 
until the decision of the council. It had been agreed at the 
States of Orleans, that commissioners should assemble with 
full powers to decide upon the question of subsidies. The 
chancellor assembled them at Pontoise, in August ; at the 
same time he convoked, at Poissy, a conference of theolo- 
gians of the two religions, who were to find, if possible, 
a compromise which should put an end to all disputes. 
The former body, in which several Calvinists had seats, 
demanded their assembly every two years, religious tolera- 
tion, reform in offices of magistracy and finance, and finally, 
in order to pay the debts of the State, the sale of the prop- 
erty of the Church, which was estimated at one hundred 
and twenty millions. Here was already the idea which, 
later, was adopted by the Revolution. The clergy warded 
off the blow by making liberal promises ; but soon it became 
necessary to adjourn the assembly. 

Edict of January ; Party Animosities (1562). — The queen, 
however, sustained the chancellor ; on this occasion she 
went even farther than he did. Her letters to the Pope 
demanded serious reforms in discipline and rites. Also she 
allowed L'H6pital to issue the edict of January (1562), 
which authorized Calvinistic worship in the country dis- 
tricts while prohibiting it in the walled towns ; suspended 
all punishment of heretics, but forbade their interfering with 
the old worship. This was the first real act of toleration. 

This virtue, unhappily, was at that time but little under- 
stood. The more tolerant the government became, the more 
intense became the hatred of the Catholics for the Protes- 
tants. The monks, and especially the Jesuits, who had 
for two years past been legalized in Prance, incited the 
faithful to defend the religion abandoned by the queen. 
The cardinal of Lorraine, the doctors of the Sorbonne, 
secretly implored the assistance of Philip II., who threaten- 
ingly remonstrated with the queen-mother. The Protestants, 
on the other hand, were not content with what had been 
granted them. Riots and quarrels broke out on all sides. 



340 CHARLES IX. 

Massacre of Vassy (1562). — "The clergy, part of the 
nobility, and almost all the people," says Castelnau, "im- 
agined that the cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise 
were appointed by God to preserve the Catholic relig- 
ion." They were recalled to Paris, contrary to the wishes 
of L'Hdpital, by Marshal St. Andre and by the king of 
Navarre, who had abandoned the Protestant party, in the 
hope of obtaining from Philip II. the restitution of his 
small kingdom. On the 1st of March, 1562, the Duke of 
Guise was passing through Vassy in Champagne. It was 
Sunday, and he stopped there to attend mass. The singing 
of six or seven hundred Protestants who were assembled in 
a barn near by attracted his attention. Some of his fol- 
lowers determined to put a stop to what they considered an 
insult to their duke, and, the Protestants refusing to be 
silent, drew their swords upon them. The Protestants 
defended themselves by throwing stones. The Duke of 
Guise, hastening to the aid of his followers, was wounded 
on the cheek ; then all his retainers fell upon the unfortu- 
nate Protestants, who were unarmed, killed sixty of them 
and wounded more than two hundred without distinction 
of age or sex. A few days afterwards at Sens others were 
massacred while returning from church. 

First Civil War (1562). — This was the signal for a war 
which, seven times suspended by short-lived treaties, broke 
out again seven times, and for thirty-two years covered 
Prance with blood and ruins. At the news of the massacre 
of Vassy, the Huguenots everywhere took up arms ; the Duke 
of Guise carried off the king and his mother by main force 
from Fontainebleau and took him to Paris, where the 
Protestants were few in number. But outside of Paris 
they amounted to at least one-tenth of the population, and 
they included the best part .of the provincial nobility. 

They proclaimed Cond^ defender of the king and pro- 
tector of the kingdom ; in the course of a few weeks they 
had taken possession of more than two hundred towns, 
among them Eouen, Lyons, Tours, Montpellier, Poitiers, 
Grenoble, Orleans, and Blois. The Guises were ill pre- 
pared, but they had possession of the king; they caused 
the Calvinists to be declared rebels, and Cond6 guilty of 
high treason ; Philip II., the champion of Catholicism 
throughout Europe, gave them a corps of three thousand 
steady and brave men from his old Spanish troops. Cond6, 



CHARLES IX. 341 

on his part, sought aid from the Protestant Elizabeth, who 
sent him three thousand soldiers to defend Eouen on condi- 
tion that Havre should be surrendered to her in x^ledge for 
the money she advanced. 

In the South the war broke out everywhere at once, with- 
out order and without plan, according to the impulses of 
hatred and revenge, and with all the cruelty which usually 
characterizes civil wars. Two party chieftains were dis- 
tinguished above all others for their cruelties, — the Cath- 
olic Blaise de Montluc, the royalist butcher, in LangTiedoc 
and Guienne ; the Protestant Des Adrets, in Provence and 
Dauphiny. The first was always accompanied by two exe- 
cutioners whom he called his lackeys ; in one city he had 
seventy Protestant ministers hung on the posts of the 
market. "It could be known where I had passed, for on 
the trees by the roadside the signs could be seen." 

The Siege of Rouen (1562). — In the North, where the 
chief leaders were, there was more concert of action, and 
the fate of the war was decided there. The Duke of Guise 
set out for Rouen at the head of the Catholic army, re- 
enforced by Antoine de Bourbon. Though that city was 
incapable of standing a siege, it still made some resistance. 
Antoine de Bourbon received a wound there, from the effects 
of which he died ; but after a few days the place was taken. 
" This great city," says Castelnau, " full of all sorts of treas- 
ure, Avas plundered for the space of eight days without re- 
spect to either religion, notwithstanding that on the next 
day after the capture an order had been given to the effect 
that all troops, without respect to nationality, should leave 
the city on pain of death." After the pillage came the legal 
executions. 

Battle of Dreux (1562). — Conde, re-enforced by seven thou- 
sand men from Germany, attempted to make amends for 
this loss, and attacked the faubourgs of Paris. EejDulsed 
by the Spaniards, he turned towards Havre for the purpose 
of adding to his army the English who were there ; but he 
was forced, by the Duke of Guise, to halt near Dreux (De- 
cember 19th). There were about fifteen or sixteen thousand 
men on each side. Cond6 broke the Catholic centre, wounded 
and captured the constable ; but the Swiss restored the fight, 
and the Duke of Guise completed the victory by a flank 
movement ; the Prince of Cond6 was made prisoner. 

Death of theDuke of Guise (February, 1563). — This was a 



342 CHARLES IX. 

great success for Guise. Of liis two rivals for power, Mar- 
shal St. Auclre was killed, MontixLorency was a captive, and 
lie had possession also of the chief of the Huguenot army. 
Catherine de' Medici was much alarmed, in spite of the joy 
which she affected ; she spoke of negotiating, but Guise did 
not wait for those whom he had overthrown to rally ; he 
actively followed up his victory and laid siege to Orleans 
so as to cut off communication between the Protestants of 
the north and those of the south. The city could not have 
resisted much longer when a fanatical Protestant, Poltrot 
de Mer6, entered his camp as a refugee and wounded him 
mortally by a shot from a pistol. 

Francis of Guise was a great captain ; France owes Calais 
to him, and he saved Metz for her ; but she owes to him 
also the religious wars which for thirty years deluged her 
in blood and covered her with ruins. The slaughter con- 
tinued because it had been begun; but it was he who 
began it. 

The Peace and Edict of Amboise (March, 1563). — Guise 
being dead, Conde and Montmorency prisoners, the queen- 
mother was mistress of the government. She knew fvill 
well that these ambitious men desired the triumph of their 
faith doubtless, but still more their personal supremacy. 
Civil war unsettled respect for royal authority. The peas- 
ants refused to pay the ancient feudal dues to the nobility. 
Catherine, to ^\\i an end to these agitations, offered peace 
to Cond^ ; he signed a treaty at Amboise in return for an 
edict which authorized the Reformed worship in the houses 
of the nobility, throughout all the domains of the justiciary 
nobles, and in one city of each bailiwick. As an evidence 
of their real union, Catholics and Protestants undertook in 
common an expedition to take Havre from the English. 
The city opened its gates after a few days. 

PMlip II. and Catherine ; Conferences of Bayonne (1565) . 
— The council of Trent having failed to bestow peace upon 
Christendom, each sovereign began to seek that his faith 
should triumph. The king of Spain, Philip II., pledged all 
the forces of his vast monarchy to the cause. He sup- 
pressed heresy in Italy and in Spain, and proposed to sup- 
press it in the Netherlands, in England, and in France. 
The Guises joined with him in this design; he now en- 
deavored to induce Catherine to do so. 

Catherine had at first faithfully executed the peace of 



CHARLES IX. 343 

Amboise ; but the extremists of the two parties were not 
content with this truce. Parliament long refused to regis- 
ter the edict of pacification. Personal animosities broke out ; 
assassination took the place of civil war. The queen, more- 
over, found the Bourbons too powerful. As formerly, when 
confronting the great Guise, she inclined to the reformers, 
so now, face to face with Cond^, she leaned toward the 
Catholics. Little by little she restricted the privileges 
granted to the Protestants by the edict of Amboise. Dur- 
ing a progress through the South she changed all the gov- 
ernors suspected of Calvinism. This progress terminated 
at Bayonne by a conference with the Duke of Alva, the 
terrible minister of Philip II. It does not appear that the 
massacre of the Protestants was proposed by the Duke of 
Alva. But the reformers were easily persuaded that an 
alliance concluded under the influence of such a man could 
have no other aim than the extermination of heresy. The 
stern Pope, Pius V., continued, as pontiff, the war which, as 
grand inquisitor, he had waged against the new doctrines. 
The Jesuits throughout Europe were fighting enthusiasti- 
cally and intelligently for the Catholic cause. 

Ordinance of Moulins (1566) . — Meanwhile the illustrious 
chancellor continued his reforms. In 1566 he issued the 
ordinance of Moulins for the reformation of justice. He 
declared the royal domain inalienable and imprescriptible, 
fixed the manner of nomination and examination of judges 
so as to diminish the inconveniences of the venality of 
offices, tried to establish uniformity and regularity of pro- 
cedure, restricted the privileges of the ofiicers of the crown ; 
deprived the cities of jurisdiction over local jDolice, and sub- 
jected the inferior courts to the inspection of the superior ; 
in short, he directed the state toward unity of power, of 
jurisdiction, and of procedure. His efforts were wasted upon 
his contemporaries ; but succeeding generations profited by 
them. 

Second Civil War (1567-1568). — The Protestants, threat- 
ened by the court, resumed their assemblies, and collected 
money and arms. Catherine, on her part, reorganized the 
royal army, and enlisted six thousand men in Switzerland. 
The Duke of Alva was in the Netherlands with consider- 
able forces which could on occasion be used in Prance. The 
reformers planned a new conspiracy, but it failed. 

Then Cond6 blockaded Paris. The inhabitants forced old 



344 CHARLES IX. 

Montmorency to go out to meet him. The valiant old con- 
stable, who was after all a very poor general, made an unfor- 
tunate disposition of his troops and was killed: he was 
seventy-five years old. The battle (of St. Denis, 1567) was 
indecisive, though the Catholics retained possession of the 
field. Marshal Vieilleville was right when he said to the 
king: " Your majesty has not gained the battle, still less the 
prince of Cond6 ; the king of Spain is the victor ; for on both 
sides together, enough valiant captains and brave French 
soldiers to conquer Flanders and all the Netherlands have 
been killed." Some time after Cond6 received nine thou- 
sand German lanzknechts, or horsemen. The queen-mother 
had no troops to oppose them. L'Hdpital seized the oppor- 
tunity and proposed a peace ; it was signed at Longjumeau 
(1568), on condition that the Protestants should restore the 
places they occupied, but that the edict of Amboise should 
be re-established without restrictions. 

Disgrace of L'Hdpital (1568). — This was but an insecure 
peace. How could men lay down their arms at that time 
in France ? Already, in Champagne, a lioly league had been 
formed. Religious war was waging everywhere ; in Great 
Britain, between Elizabeth and Mary Stuart ; in the Nether- 
lands, between the Duke of Alva and the Beggars ; even, in 
one sense, in Spain. Catherine wished to put an end to 
this war, which was continually breaking out anew, by some 
stroke after the manner of the Italians. 

L'jri dpital was not the man to suit such a policy ; he was 
accordingly displaced (May, 1568). A plot was laid to 
carry off on the same day Cond6 and Coligny from Bur- 
gundy, and Jeanne d'Albret, the widow of Antoine de Bour- 
bon, from B6arn ; but all three of them escaped : Cond6 and 
Coligny went to Eochelle, which city had in the last war 
taken sides with them. The intrepid Jeanne d'Albret joined 
them there with her son Henry of Beam. She offered " her 
life, her possessions, her children for the defence of the 
cause." 

Third Civil War (1568-1570). — Catherine now believed 
herself ready for war. She declared it by issuing an edict 
which forbade the exercise of the so-called reformed relig- 
ion under pain of death, and ordered that all Protestant 
ministers should leave the kingdom within a fortnight. All 
the members of the parliaments and of the universities were 
compelled to take an oath of Catholicism. The court had 



CHARLES IX. 345 

only an army of eighteen thousand infantry and four thou- 
sand cavalry with which to enforce such edicts. It was 
placed under the command of the young Duke of Anjou ; 
Tavannes and Biron were to direct it. All the southwest 
was at that time in possession of the Calvinists. 

Battle of Jarnac ; Death of Conde (1569). — In the follow- 
ing spring Marshal Tavannes surprised the admiral with 
only the rear-guard, near Jarnac (March 13, 1569). Cond6 
hearing of it hastened to his assistance with three hundred 
horse. He had been wounded in the arm the night before, 
and just as he was about to charge he received in addition 
a kick from a horse which broke his leg. In spite of all he 
dashed forward upon the enemy ; but his horse was killed, 
and he was thrown down. He was in the act of surrender- 
ing to a gentleman, when the captain of the guards of the 
Duke of Anjou shot him in the head. 

The loss of this brave and active prince was a serious one. 
The Protestants spoke of abandoning the open country, and 
shutting themselves up in Eochelle ; but Jeanne d'Albret 
presented herself to the discouraged army at Saintes with 
her son Henry of Beam and the young prince of Conde. 
"My friends," said she, "here are two new chiefs whom 
God gives you, and two orphans whom I confide to your 
care." Henry, prince of Beam, then fifteen years old, was 
born at Pau, and had been reared with severe simplicity as 
a country gentleman. Brave and intelligent, he pleased 
every one. He was appointed general-in-chief , with Coligny 
as counsellor and lieutenant. 

Coligny; Battle of Moncontour (1569). — Coligny, the 
defender of St. Quentin, had many qualities necessary to a 
party chieftain in such a war. A staunch and intelligent 
Protestant, he was loved and respected by ministers as well 
as soldiers. He was not x^erhaps a very great general, and 
Catherine did not consider him a profound politician ; but 
he never allowed himself to be cast down ; he saw clearly, 
and he knew how to turn everything to advantage. He 
wished to lead his Huguenots to the conquest of the Span- 
ish Low Countries, that he might win for France, by one 
stroke, fair provinces and internal peace. He conceived the 
Protestant colonization of America ; if he had succeeded, 
French blood and the French language would now have 
been predominant in the new world. 

Re-enforced by thirteen thousand Germans, Coligny took 



346 CHARLES IX. 

the offensive, and defeated the Catholic army; but Tar 
vannes repaired the loss. German Catholics, Spaniards 
sent by the Duke of Alva, Italians sent by Pius V., swelled 
the forces of the Duke of Anjou. Having been driven to 
the Loire, he turned back and succeeded in surprising the 
Protestant army near Moncontour : six hundred Huguenot 
soldiers were left on the field of battle. But the victory of 
Moncontour was as futile as that of Jarnac. Coligny trav- 
ersed the whole South, recruiting his army as he went. 

Peace of Saint-Germain (1570). — Catherine de' Medici 
triumphed in the council. Nothing was gained by fighting 
a party which, though continually defeated, continually 
renewed the attack ; some other method must be tried. 
In order to disarm the Protestants, she granted them the 
free exercise of their worship in two cities in each province, 
and in all those in which it was already established ; the 
admission of Calvinists to all employments, and the posses- 
sion of four cities, — Eochelle, Cognac, Montauban, and La 
Charity. 

St. Bartholomew (1572). — At the news of this peace 
there was one great cry of indignation from the Catholics. 
Catherine followed up her new policy. She hastened the 
marriage of the young prince of B^aru and Margaret, sister 
of Charles IX., and accepted the proposition of Coligny to 
lead his coreligionists against the Duke of Alva in the Low 
Countries, where the Dutch Beggars had just formed the 
Batavian Republic. Such an enterprise was pleasing to the 
Huguenots, and seemed like a return to the old foreign policy, 
laid aside since the death of Henry II. Coligny saw in a 
war with Spain the means of preserving gloriously and 
securely the peace of France. 

Charles IX. was then twenty-one years old; mentally 
bright, but of a weak and violent character. He had more 
than once thought that the Huguenot chiefs carried their 
heads too high, but, impatient of his mother's rule and envi- 
ous of his brother, he eagerly entered into the new projects ; 
wrote to Coligny, to Jeanne d'Albret, and pushed forward 
the marriage of Henry of B^arn and his sister. The queen 
of Navarre decided to come to Paris, and the admiral followed 
her thither, as did also a number of Huguenot gentlemen. 

Catherine had succeeded too well. The king now saw 
things only through Coligny's eyes. The Protestants, en- 
couraged, drew up in synod at Eochelle the very confession 



CHARLES IX. 347 

of faith whicli they hold at the present day. Catherine 
remonstrated with her son, but he paid no heed to her ; the 
Duke of Anjou, the Guises, Tavannes, and all the Catholic 
nobles who had fought against the Eeformation were indig- 
nant at seeing the power pass into the hands of their ene- 
mies. Philip II., threatened in the Low Countries, distributed 
money among the people for the purpose of inciting them to 
riots ; Paris grumbled. Jeanne d' Albret died suddenly ; it 
was thought from the effects of poison, but this has never 
been proved. When the marriage was celebrated, August 
18th, before the porch of Notre Dame there was great diffi- 
culty in preventing a riot. Catherine fomented these dis- 
cords. On the 12th of August Coligny was shot by an 
assassin in the pay of the Duke of G-uise. Charles went 
immediately to the admiral and swore to avenge him. The 
next day the queen came with the Duke of Anjou, the Duke 
of Angouleme, Tavannes, and others, to assail the king. She 
represented that the two parties were ready to come to blows, 
that each of them would elect a chief, and that the king 
would have nothing left but his title. After much incite- 
ment and threatening on her part, Charles cried out suddenly 
that since they were determined to kill the admiral, he 
wished they would kill all the Huguenots in France, " so 
that not one would be left to reproach him." 

The municipality of Paris was ready. The provost of the 
merchants, being summoned to the Louvre, received an order 
from the king to shut the gates and to place on guard cap- 
tains, lieutenants, and citizens whom he could trust. The 
bell of Saint-Germain I'Auxerrois was to give the signal at 
three o'clock on the night of the 24th of August, the feast 
of St. Bartholomew. At two o'clock the bell began to 
ring ; soon the bells of all the churches responded. 

Henry of Guise, Aumale, and the bastard of Angouleme 
hastened to the hdtel of Coligny. A German, named Besme, 
was the first to enter his chamber, and plunged his sword 
into the admiral's breast. He and the others then threw 
him into the courtyard, where Guise insultingly kicked his 
dead body. 

A white mark had been made upon the houses of the 
Huguenots. T^ligny, the son-in-law of the admiral, Koche- 
foucauld, a friend of the king, and others were killed after 
the admiral, most of them being surprised while in bed. The 
king of Navarre and the prince of Cond6 were taken before 



348 CHARLES IX. 

the king, who threatened them with death unless they ab- 
jured Protestantism. Accounts differ as to the number of 
the slain : some estimate it at ten thousand, others at four 
thousand, and still others at two thousand. The last state- 
ment is the most probable. The next morning the king is 
said to have stood at one of the windows of the Louvre, firing 
with a musket upon the flying Protestants ; but during the 
day he became horrified at what he had done, and sent de- 
spatches into all the provinces to stop the contagion of the 
example set by Paris. But the crowd, with the ferocious 
animal instincts found among the lower classes, and especially 
among the dregs of those in large cities, continued the 
slaughter. They killed not only Huguenots, but their own 
creditors, rivals, and enemies. Thieves with white crosses 
on their hats and white handkerchiefs on their arms mur- 
dered, under pretext of Huguenotism, those whom they 
wished to plunder. 

Meanwhile the king, taking the advice of his mother, 
went, on the twenty-sixth, to assume before the Parliament 
the responsibility of that dreadful night, and sent new 
orders to the governors of the provinces, which extended 
the massacre to Meaux, La Charity, Orleans, Saumur, Lyons, 
Bourges, Toulouse, Bordeaux, etc. ; fifteen or twenty thou- 
sand victims perished. Some of the governors refused to 
obey the court : among them, Montmorency, in the Isle of 
France ; Longueville in Picardy ; and those of Lower ISTor- 
mandy. Burgundy, Dauphiny, Languedoc, and Auvergne. 
The executioner of Troyes refused to take part in the 
murders, saying that it was not his duty to execute until 
sentence had been passed. The executioner of Lyons re- 
turned the same answer. 

L'Hdpital may be counted among the victims of this 
fearful stroke of fanaticism. When the assassins were 
about to enter his castle, where he was living in retirement, 
some horsemen came up and stopped them. Their chief 
then told the old man that their object was not to kill him, 
but to bring him pardon. " I did not know," he answered, 
"that I deserved either death or pardon." He died six 
months after, broken down by grief and mortification : his 
last words were, " Let the memory of that accursed day be 
blotted out forever." 

Fourth Civil War; Peace of Rochelle (1573).— This 
great crime was as useless as crimes always are. The 



CHARLES IX. 349 

Protestants had lost their chiefs, but as soon as the stunning 
effect of this was over, they took up arms again in desperate 
rage. The Duke of Anjou besieged Eochelle, but could not 
take it, although he had with him all the princes, most of 
the great nobles, and almost all of the court nobility. The 
king of Navarre and the prince of Cond6 had been forced to 
follow him thither. ISTlmes, Montauban, a hundred other 
cities in which the Protestants were in a majority, had shut 
their gates. At the same time the queen saw among the 
Catholics a number of persons who, while they were not 
favorable to the Calvinists, were certainly enemies to the 
Guises on account of their furious' intolerance. Montmo- 
rency and his brothers were not with the royal army ; they 
formed a third party which would soon come to the front. 
After four assaults, the besiegers were no further advanced 
than at the beginning; the Duke of Anjou, anxious to go 
and take the crown of Poland, entered into a negotiation, 
and Charles IX. was obliged to grant liberty of conscience 
to the Protestants, by the peace of Eochelle, at the very 
moment when he was receiving fervent and enthusiastic 
congratulations for the massacre of St. Bartholomew from 
the courts of Eome and Spain. 

Death of Charles IX. (1574) . — Mortification on account 
of this reverse, remorse, the excesses resulting from an 
impetuous temperament, and the violent exercises of hunt- 
ing, in which he frantically engaged, undermined the con- 
stitution of the young king. A frightful disease was 
wearing him away; he became subject to convulsions and 
furious attacks of delirium, during which the blood would 
burst from the pores of his skin, his nose, and his ears. 
Visions of bleeding victims terrified him, and he fancied he 
constantly heard cries of lamentation. He died on May 30, 
1574, at twenty-four years of age, abandoned by every one 
except his old Huguenot nurse. 



350 HENRY III. 



CHAPTER XLV. 

HENRY III. 
(1574-1589 A.D.) 

Henry III. — The Duke of Anjou, heir presumptive of 
Charles IX., was in Pbland at the time of his brother's 
death. Catherine de' Medici had obtained from the Polish 
nobility a crown for her favorite son. Henry was at once 
disgusted with this land of the Sarmatians, with its rude 
but manly nobles. At the news of his brother's death, he 
fled from his capital during the night. Pursued by his sub- 
jects, he did not stop till he reached the Austrian territories. 
The pleasures of Vienna, as well as those of Venice, detained 
him a long time ; he did not reach his new kingdom until 
two months after he had stealthily left the old. 

Henry was a king totally unfit for the situation be- 
queathed him by his brother. The victories gained in his 
name by Tavannes had given him an exaggerated reputa- 
tion ; the abuse of pleasures had killed out the fiery blood 
which at first had made him seem as brave as his ancestors ; 
when he was not engaged in monstrous debaucheries, he 
seemed only to enjoy childish and feminine pastimes, and 
all his religion consisted in certain external practices. He 
was wholly given over to puerile occupations. 

His first acts showed what was to be expected of him. 
He gave the Duke of Savoy Pinerolo, Perosa, and Savigli- 
ano, the last remnant of the conquests of Francis I. beyond 
the mountains, and had scarcely entered France when he 
ordered all Protestants to become Catholics or to leave the 
kingdom. He made a formal entrance into Paris by which 
he disgusted all sensible people, "being surrounded by a 
great number of monkeys, parrots, and small dogs." At 
Eheims, "when the crown was i^laced on his head," says 
L'Estoile, " he said aloud that it hurt him, and it slipped off 
twice, as if it wished to fall." The people saw in this an 
evil omen, and they were right. 

The Politiques. — Meanwhile France was suffering for 



HENRY III. 351 

want of an honest, brave, and skilful chief, to take firm 
hold, of the reins of government. Castelnau estimates that 
" during the civil wars more than a million of people had 
been killed, under pretext of religion or the ptiblic good." 
Besides the extreme Catholics and the fanatical Protestants, 
a third party was formed, the party of the poUtiques, com- 
posed of moderate Catholics who were desirous of re-estab- 
lishing public tranquillity by means of religious toleration 
and stern repression of factions. The three Montmorencys, 
Damville, Thor^ and Meru, were the most prominent men 
of this party, which comprised a great many magistrates 
and wealthy citizens. The king's brother, the Duke 
of Alengon, had undertaken the direction of it, more from 
motives of ambition than of patriotism. The Guises were 
at the head of the Catholics, the Bourbons at the head of 
the Protestants ; he therefore thought it advisable to form 
a third party which should be devoted to his own schemes. 
Two things are at any rate to be set down to his credit : 
" he desired," he said, '' to be a Frenchman in word and in 
deed, an enemy of Spain ; " and he never stained his hands 
with the blood of the Huguenots. 

The Alliance of the PoKtiques and the Huguenots ; Fifth 
War ; Le Balafre (1575-1576). — The Calvinists now had for 
their leaders only men like the king of Navarre, who put 
interest before religion ; it was easy to come to terms with 
men whose ambition and patriotism dominated their relig- 
ious fervor. Conde and Damville, the Protestants and the 
poUtiques, concluded an armed alliance" for the purpose of 
obtaining the deliverance of the princes, liberty of con- 
science, and the assembly of the States-General. 

The new king was greatly annoyed by the intrigues of 
his brother, and was anxious to get rid of him. Several 
times the Duke of Alen^on was in danger of being killed ; 
but he managed to escape and hastened to the South, where 
he cemented the alliance of the Protestants and the poU- 
tiques. Damville collected fifteen thousand soldiers in 
Languedoc, and Cond6 sent from Germany an advance 
guard of five thousand men. The house of Lorraine pushed 
warlike preparations energetically, but Catherine distrusted 
them and negotiated in every direction. The Duke of 
Guise left her to her intrigues and went against the Ger- 
mans, whom he defeated at Dormans. The risks he ran 
during this engagement, in which he was wounded in the 



352 HENRY III. 

face, increased his popularity. Among the Catholics the 
talk was all of Le Balafre ('' the scarred "), the worthy heir 
of the great Guise. But Cond^, with eighteen thousand men 
and sixteen cannon, passed without hindrance through Cham- 
pagne and Burgundy, and rejoined the Duke of Alen9on at 
Moulins. The escape of the king of Navarre increased the 
hopes of the party. "They have killed the queen, my 
mother, at Paris," said he ; " they have killed the admiral 
there also, and all my best friends ; I will never go back 
there unless I am dragged back." 

The Peace of Monsieur (May, 1576). —The Duke of Alen- 
9on offered himself as a mediator, and drew up at Beaulieu 
the peace which bears his name, the peace of Monsieur, a 
title formerly given to the younger brother of the king. 
The negotiator had Anjou ceded to him, and took its name; 
also Touraine and Berry, with all regal rights, on the sole 
condition of his doing homage. The king of Navarre ob- 
tained the government of Guienne ; Cond6, that of Picardy. 
The free exercise of their religion was granted to all Prot- 
estants throughout the kingdom except in Paris and at 
court, until the next convocation of the States-General, and- 
of a/ree and lioly general council. A number of places of 
refuge were ceded, and tribunals, half Protestant and half 
Catholic, were established. 

The Holy League. — This peace seemed a betrayal of the 
Catholic cause. ' ' What," they said, " has the king come 
to this after two years of rule ? " He had, indeed, levied 
millions enough from the cities, had exacted loans enough 
from the clergy, and created a sufficient number of offices 
burdensome and injurious to the country. But everything 
had been consumed in festivities and in satisfying the greedi- 
ness of favorites and minions. Since the court abandoned 
the Catholics, it became the more important that they should 
stand by each other. 

The seigneur d'Humi^res, governor of P^ronne, refused 
to yield the town to Conde, who had been appointed gov- 
ernor of the province, and caused the prelates, lords, and 
burgesses to sign " a very Christian compact, setting forth 
that their lives and their fortunes should be devoted to the 
task of keeping the city and the province in obedience to 
the king and in the observance of the Catholic faith." The 
example of D'Humi^res was contagious. The clergy, es- 
pecially the Jesuits, influenced the masses in this direction, 
and soon each province had its league. 



HENRY III. 353 

Henry of Guise was not so great a soldier as his father 
and was less magnanimous, but he had higher and more 
fixed purposes and greater skill in making use of religion 
as a means to his political ends. He it was who drew up 
and disseminated throughout all France the constitution of 
the Holy League ; the members signing it swore " to main- 
tain the service of God according to the forms of the Holy 
Catholic Church ; to maintain King Henry III. in the state, 
sj^lendor, authority and power which were due to him from 
his subjects ; to restore to the provinces the rights, immuni- 
ties, and liberties which they had enjoyed in the time of 
Clovis ; to proceed against those who should persecute the 
League, without respect of persons; and finally, to render 
prompt obedience and faithful service, until death, to the 
chief who should be appointed." 

Pretensions of Guise. — This chief was of course fixed 
upon in advance ; but Henry of Guise looked beyond that 
position. Henry III., in public opinion, was already set 
aside. The new Duke of Anjou was decried as an accom- 
plice of the Huguenots. Next after these there were no 
heirs but the heretical Bourbons. These set aside, the road 
lay open to the faithful allies of Philip II. and the Holy 
See. New genealogies even connected the house of Guise 
with the dynasty of Charlemagne. 

The First States-General of Blois (1576). — The States- 
General which assembled at Blois in December, 1576, 
showed Henry III. the extent of the danger. By fraud 
and violence the League had excluded the politiques and 
the Calvinists from the elections ; in the whole body of the 
deputies there was but one Protestant. Chosen under the 
influence of the Guises, the States threatened not only the 
liberty of the Protestants, but the authority of the king. 
They requested that resolutions which they should pass 
unanimously should have the force of laws, and that thirty- 
six members chosen by them should assist the royal council. 
The mass of the people, however, had not yet joined the 
League. Henry III. refused the insidious request of the 
States-General, but rushed with all his might into violent 
Catholicism. He signed the League and declared himself 
its chief, thinking thus to make a master-stroke and sup- 
plant the Guises. 

The States, at the king's request, had decided upon the 
suppression of the reformed religion. To vote was easy, 



354 HENRY III. 

but the vote led to war; and to make war, money was 
needed. The king received neither subsidies nor even the 
right to alienate portions of the royal domains in order to 
provide for expenses. 

Sixth War (1577); Ordinance of Blois (1579).— The 
peace promised to the Hixguenots had not been kept; a 
petty warfare had been carried on. Henry III. would not 
employ the Duke of Guise, for fear of increasing it. He 
took advantage of some small victories to conclude the 
peace of Bergerac with the Huguenots. This peace granted 
to the Protestants a liberty of conscience more extended 
and less specific than that allowed by former edicts, special 
judges in the eight Parliaments, eight places of refuge, and 
decreed the dissolution of all leagues. The king hoped thus 
to get the advantage of the League, while seeming to be 
merely securing himself against the Huguenots. 

Strange as it may seem, important legislative reforms 
were carried out in these wretched times. The ordinance 
of Blois comprises in its three hundred and sixty-three arti- 
cles some excellent and liberal provisions for civil reform, 
but they give evidence of the power which Catholicism, 
strengthened by danger, had acquired within the last few 
years. The king reserved the power to make direct appoint- 
ments to all prelacies and benefices, observing certain con- 
ditions of age, good behavior, and intelligence. Plurality 
of archbishoprics or parochial curacies was forbidden. Res- 
idence became obligatory; simony was to be put down. 
Marriage, which could be legalized only by a priest, was sur- 
rounded by more rigid precautions ; and some good measures 
were taken against the usurpation of titles of nobility, ve- 
nality and excessive multiplication of offices, and dishonesty 
in judicial matters. 

The Court of Henry III. — But the conduct of the king 
was such as to spoil the best of measures. Unsparing 
pamphlets disclosed the baseness of the licentious and ruf- 
fianly court of the last of the Valois, in which murders 
alternated with pleasures. In the evening there were balls 
and festivals ; in the morning murderous encounters, when 
the duel had not been forestalled by secret assassination. 
Each prince had his hired assassins who killed secretly, 
and his favorites who murdered openly. ' In order to defray 
increasing expenses, the taxation was increased each year ; 
edicts were constantly sent to Parliament directing extra 



HENRY III. 356 

taxes, which were registered only after a long resistance. 
The discontent became general. The states of Normandy, 
Brittany, Burgundy, and Auvergne protested. A short war, 
(the seventh), which broke out without cause and ended 
without reason, showed the progress of disorganization. 
The peace of Bergerac was re-established at Fleix (1580). 

Expedition of the Duke of Anjou into the Netherlands 
(1581-1583). — It had become necessary to launch these 
turbulent spirits upon some serious undertaking; in fact, 
to revive the project of Coligny, and make foreign war in 
order to escape civil war. France could choose between 
two battle-fields. Philip was invading Portugal; the Low 
Countries were being continually overrun by the Spaniards, 
and several provinces were calling for a liberator. Henry 
sent a fleet to assist Portugal, and an army to aid his 
brother, the Duke of Anjou, whom the Flemings had called 
to their aid ; but both fleet and re-enforcements were insufii- 
cient, and officially he disowned the enterprises. The fleet 
was entirely destroyed"*, the Duke of Anjou, after having 
been proclaimed Duke of Brabant and Count of Flanders, 
was left without money, and forced to evacuate the country, 
and died a few months after his return to France (1584), 
The Netherlands at the same time lost William of Orange, 
assassinated by an emissary of Spain. They then offered 
themselves to Henry III., on condition that he should de- 
liver them from the Inquisition and from Philip II. But 
it was too late. 

Revival of the League. — The death of the Duke of Anjou, 
the brother and heir of Henry III., raised a question cer- 
tain to rekindle all the religious and political passions of 
the French. The danger that a Bourbon, a relapsed heretic, 
should become the heir of the Valois, was noAV real ; for 
Henry III., the last surviving son of Henry II., had no 
issue, and it was thought that he had only a few years to 
live. . The League had for some time been in a state of con- 
fusion; suddenly it revived, and spread itself among the 
masses ; instead of a secret society there now arose a great 
revolutionary party. The authors of this movement were 
mostly the preachers in the churches of Paris. The League 
spread from thence to the provinces, and established, espe- 
cially where it was strongest, a reign of terror. 

Treaty of Joinville, between the Duke of Guise and Spain 
(1584) . — Henry of Guise saw clearly that the moment had 



356 HENRY III. 

come to strike a great blow, and without hesitating he con- 
cluded with Philip II. the treaty of Joinville (December, 
1584), by which the contracting parties engaged to extirpate 
sects and heresies ; to exclude from the throne of France all 
princes who were themselves heretical or promised public 
impunity to heretics ; and to assure the succession of the 
Valois to Charles, cardinal of Bourbon, who was brought 
forward to hide, for the time, the pretensions of the Guises. 
The Guises received from Pope Gregory XIII. complete lib- 
erty of action in the matter. The manifesto of the League 
appeared in March, 1585. The signers swore not to lay 
down their arms until "the church of God was re-estab- 
lished in the true Catholic faith, the nobility reinstated in 
their rights, and the people relieved from the new taxations." 
It was soon put into execution. Guise, Mayenne, Elboeuf, 
Mercoeur, and Aumale raised revolt in the provinces. The 
cities of Lyons, Bourges, Orleans, Rouen, Angers, Eheims, 
and Chalons declared in favor of the League. 

Treaty of Nemours, between the King and the Duke of 
Guise (1585). — The position of Henry III. became very 
difficult. He was disposed to declare against the Guises, 
whom he detested ; but he demanded that " the B^arnais " 
should become a Catholic, promising on this condition to 
make him his heir. Henry refused. He replied to the 
manifesto of the League by appearing against the conspira- 
tors in the role of champion of the king and the laws of the 
state ; this was a good move : he thus regained the alliance 
of the poUtiques. Montmorency, " the king of Languedoc," 
joined forces with him. 

Henry III. found himself between two enemies whom he 
had long wished to see destroying each other, — Guise and 
Bourbon, the Catholics and the Protestants. Not all the 
great cities were in the League, and there was a remnant of 
prestige attaching to the name of king. But Paris was 
beginning to arouse ; Guise was coming with twelve thou- 
sand men ; a defeat would ruin everything. Henry turned 
to the Lorraines, hoping to deceive them again. At the 
treaty of ISTemours (July 7th) he sanctioned all that had 
been done for religion, delivered to the chief of the League 
nine places of refuge, and, on returning to Paris, published 
an edict which forbade the reformed worship under pain of 
confiscation, and gave ministers and other Protestants a 
fortnight in which to leave the kingdom. War against the 



HENRY III. J 357 

Huguenots was urgently desired. The Pope used all his 
power to instigate it. There was no longer any place for 
men of the moderate party. 

Henry of Navarre. — Meanwhile the prince who was to 
become their chief, the king of Navarre, was learning to 
face dangers of every sort. Henry of Navarre was a man of 
the most brilliant courage. Reared among the mountaineers 
of the Pyrenees, he equalled them in agility and was inured 
to physical fatigue. The vicissitudes through which he had 
passed had greatly unsettled him in matters of religion; 
consequently he cherished no ill-feeling against those who 
professed a different faith. His nature made fanaticism 
odious to him, and his position demanded that he should be 
tolerant. He was a genial companion, wearing the same 
face in good or ill fortune, hopeful even under the most 
desperate circumstances ; fond of pleasure ; humane, both 
from natural kindliness and from experience of life ; and had 
friends, who gained from his friendship more kind words 
than valuable gifts, to be sure, but to whom his heart was 
open if his hand was, of necessity, closed. His enforced 
residence at the court of the Valois had been fatal to his 
morals. For several years he ceased to think of his career 
and his fortune. After the death of the Duke of Anjou, 
Duplessis-Mornay wrote to him : " Pastimes are out of 
season. It is time that you should make love to France." 
Henry realized the fact : he cast pleasure aside and put on 
his armor. 

Every one attacked him, and to each and all he made the 
same reply. Duplessis-Mornay, the Pope of the Huguenots, 
as he was called, drew up a declaration by which the king 
of Navarre and his allies were to " undertake the cause of 
the king against the chiefs of the League, the authors of 
all the ills of France." Cond6, Damville, Lesdigui^res, and 
himself held all the South. The queen of England and 
the G-erman princes, being earnestly solicited, also promised 
prompt assistance. 

Anarchy of the Kingdom. — The king would willingly 
have continued his see-saw policy between the two parties. 
But the horizon was darkening all around ; the Prince of 
Orange had been assassinated, Mary Stuart beheaded. At 
Paris the chiefs of the sixteen sections formed themselves 
into a council in the heart of the League for the purpose of 
giving it greater energy. 



358 HENRY III. 

In the provinces anarcliy prevailed; under pretext of 
re-establishing unity of religion both Leaguers and Hugue- 
nots were sacrificing the unity of the State. Each gov- 
ernor entrenched himself in his province ; feudalism arose 
from the tomb in which ten kings had buried it. The 
cities on their part demanded again their old privileges; 
the municipal magistrates seized upon the military authority 
which they had lost during the fifteenth century, and the 
civil jurisdiction which L'Hdpital had just taken from them. 
They no longer recognized any limit to their criminal juris- 
diction, nor any superior control of their financial manage- 
ment. Thus efforts to revive the mediseval communes fol- 
lowed upon efforts to revive feudalism. Francis I. had 
almost believed that royalty was everything ; it now seemed 
likely to be reduced to nothing. 

Eighth War, or War of the Three Henrys (1586-1589) ; 
Battle of Coutras (1587). — In 1587 the aid promised by 
the allies of the two parties arrived. Henry III. placed 
himself at the head of a fine army which was to hold the 
Loire, sent Joyeuse, well equipped, against the king of 
Navarre in Guienne, and gave a few men to the Duke of 
Guise to hold back the Germans. He sincerely hoped that 
Navarre would be beaten by Joyeuse, Guise by the Germans ; 
this done, he himself, from his central position, would crush 
out all that remained of these three armies of foreigners, 
Calvinists and Catholics. 

Henry of Navarre, unable to join his German auxiliaries, 
drew Joyeuse south, into the midst of the Huguenot country. 
The two armies met at Coutras. When the Huguenots came 
in sight of the enemy, the ministers raised the one hundred 
and forty-seventh Psalm, and at the same time all the army 
fell upon their knees. '' Cousins," cried the king of Navarre 
to Conde and to Soissons, " I have only to remind you that 
you are of the blood of the Bourbons, and as God lives I 
will show you that I am your elder." In one hour every 
man of the royal army was either slain or flying. Joyeuse 
was about to surrender his sword to two Huguenots, when 
a third shot him through the head with a pistol (October, 
1587). The victory had only a moral effect. Henry lost time 
by going to lay at the feet of the Countess of Grammont the 
flags taken from the enemy. Meantime the Duke of Guise, 
north of the Loire, triumphed over the Germans under the 
Baron of Dohna at Vimory, near Montargis, and again near 



HENRY III. 359 

Auneau (1587). Henry III. was unskilful enough to leave 
to his rival the glory of driving them out of the country. 

The Day of Barricades. — Henry III. re-entered Paris. As 
he passed along, the populace cried out, " Saul has killed 
his thousands, and David his ten thousands " ; and a few 
days after, the Sorbonne decided that "the government 
could be taken out of the hands of princes who were found 
incapable." Henry III., alarmed, forbade the Duke of 
Gruise to come to Paris, and quartered in the faubourgs four 
thousand Swiss and several companies of the guards. The 
Sixteen feared that all was over ; they summoned the Balafre 
and he came (May 9th). 

Cries of " Hosannah to the Son of David ! " resounded 
throughout Paris, and followed him to the Louvre. The king 
was pale with anger when he received him, and said, '^ I sent 
you word not to come here " ; and in spite of the duke's ex- 
cuses he would perhaps have had him assassinated if his 
mother and his counsellors had not turned him from his 
purpose. The king and the chief of the League fortified 
themselves, one in the Louvre, the other in the H6tel Guise. 
Negotiations were carried on for two days. On the morn- 
ing of the eleventh the duke, well attended, returned to the 
Louvre, and in loud tones demanded of the king that he 
should send away his counsellors, establish the Inquisition, 
and push to the utmost the war against the heretics. That 
evening the king ordered the companies of the city guards 
to hold several positions, and the next morning he intro- 
duced into the city the Swiss and two thousand men of the 
French guards. But the city guards failed him. In two 
hours all Paris was under arms, all the streets were ren- 
dered impassable, and the advancing barricades soon reached 
the positions occupied by the troops. 

At this juncture Guise came out of his hdtel, dressed in a 
white doublet, with a small cane in his hand; saved the 
Swiss, who were on the point of being massacred, sent them 
back to the king with insulting scorn, and quieted every- 
thing as if by magic. He demanded the office of lieuten- 
ant-general of the kingdom for himself, the convocation of 
the States at Paris, the forfeiture of the Bourbons, and, for 
his friends, provincial governments and all the other ofiices. 

The queen-mother debated these conditions for three 
hours. During this time the attack was suspended, and 
Henry III. was thus enabled to leave the Louvre and make 
his escape. 



360 HENRY in. 

Second States of Blois (1588). — The Duke of Guise had 
made a mistake ; but if he did not have the king, he had 
Paris. There was now a king of Paris and a king of 
France ; negotiations were carried on, and to the aston- 
ishment of all, Henry III. at length granted what two 
months before he had refused in front of the barricades. 
He swore that he would not lay down his arms until the 
iieretics were entirely exterminated ; declared that any non- 
Catholic prince forfeited his rights to the throne, appointed 
the Duke of Guise lieutenant-general, and convoked the 
States at Blois. 

The States of Blois were composed entirely of Leaguers. 
The most violent enemies of the king were appointed presi- 
dents of the three orders. The king, in an able and elegant 
address, complained of " the inordinate ambition of some of 
his subjects." This was somewhat bold ; the clergy insisted 
that the phrase should be suppressed in the printed copy. 
Then for some time there was a discussion as to whether 
the States should proceed "by resolution or by petitions 
addressed to the king, the latter being only the president of 
the States, in which all power was vested." This question 
being settled, it was demanded that the tallies should be 
lowered, and that the courtiers should be compelled to dis- 
gorge. The most enthusiastic of the Leaguers spoke of 
making Guise constable, and shutting the king up in a con- 
vent if he opposed it. The Duchess of Montpensier showed, 
hanging at her girdle, a pair of golden scissors with which 
she proposed " to bestow on Henry the monastic crown." 

Assassination of the Duke of Guise (1588). — The Invinci- 
ble Armada having been destroyed, the ally of Philip II. 
could be safely attacked. Some wished to defy the Duke 
of Guise. " They would not dare to do it," said he. But 
the king dared. " I have been a long time under the tute- 
lage of the lords of Guise," said he, •' and I am determined 
to be rid of them entirely ; he who has a partner, has a mas- 
ter." He decided that if no one could be found who would 
slay the duke, he would do the deed himself ; the day fixed 
for the assassination was the 23d of December. 

On the 22d the Duke of Guise was urged to withdraw 
from Blois. He replied, " My affairs are in such a position 
that if I should see death entering by the window, I would 
not go out of the door to escape him." The king had 
informed him that he would hold a privy council at six 



HENRY III. 361 

o'clock in the morning. At four o'clock the king called the 
Forty-five (his body-guard), reminded them of their obliga- 
tions to him, exposed the designs of Guise, and called on 
them to avenge him. They all declared their readiness to 
kill the rebel. The king himself distributed daggers among 
them, and stationed them in his cabinet, in his chamber, and 
on the stairway. He caused a mass to be celebrated by one 
of his chaplains, "to the end that God might grant him 
grace to execute his undertaking." 

On his way to the council the duke received another 
note warning him of his fate. " It is the ninth," said he. 
Passing from the council-chamber to that of the prince, he 
saluted the gentlemen present, and advanced to the door of 
the cabinet in which he supposed Henry to be. Just as the 
duke drew aside the portiere, one of the Forty-five seized 
him by the arm and plunged a dagger into his breast, crying 
out, " Traitor, thou shalt die ! " Though attacked on all 
sides, the duke dragged his murderers, who held him by the 
arms, from one end of the room to the other, even to the 
foot of the king's bed, and there fell dead. Hearing the 
noise, the cardinal of Guise exclaimed, "They are killing 
my brother." " The king has business to settle with you, 
my lord," replied the Marshal d' Aumont, " do not stir ; " 
and the cardinal was carried off to prison. The next day he 
was killed, and the two bodies were burned, in order that 
their bones should not be made up into relics. The murder 
accomplished, the king came out of his cabinet to see if his 
enemy was really dead, and looked at him for a long time ; 
then he hastened to Catherine de' Medici, who was dying, 
and said, " I am once more king of France, madam, having 
killed the king of Paris." " Cutting is not everything, my 
son," she replied ; " there's sewing yet to be done." 

Assassination of Henry III, (1589). — Killing the Duke 
of Guise was not killing the League. At the news of his 
death Paris was stunned for a moment ; then its fury broke 
out. All the churches resounded with imprecations against 
the king, and lamentations over the " two martyred broth- 
ers." Night and day processions filed through the capital. 
The Sixteen forced the city council to give the command of 
Paris to the Duke of Aumale while awaiting the arrival of 
Mayenne. Tlie Sorbonne decreed " that the French people 
were set free from the oath of allegiance taken to Henry 
III." Parliament remaining firm in its fidelity to the mon- 



362 HENRY III. 

archy, fifty of its members, including President de Harlay, 
were arrested. 

Henry III. had gained nothing by the murder ; a f ew 
thousand nobles gathered round him could not give him 
strength to act, and the excommunication issued against 
him for the murder of a cardinal was embarrassing even to 
his friends. He had effected nothing for his own cause by 
the deed done at Blois, but he had helped the fortunes of 
the king of Navarre, into whose arms he was forced to cast 
himself. Before the time of this last tragedy, the king of 
Navarre had been greatly embarrassed. " The devil is let 
loose," he wrote, " and it is marvellous that I am not over- 
come by his power. I cannot fail to be soon either a fool 
or a wise man. This year will be my turning-point." And 
it was so. That time of trial made him the man who knew 
so well how to conduct his own fortunes and those of France 
through all dangers. Henry III. received "the B^arnais" 
at Plessis-les-Tours ; he cast himself at the feet of the king, 
who raised him, and called him his brother. 

The junction of the Protestant and the royal armies under 
the same standard completely changed the nature of the 
war. It was no longer feudal Protestantism, but the demo- 
cratic League, which threatened royalty ; monarchy entered 
into a struggle with the Catholic masses in revolt against it. 
Henry III. called together, at Tours, his useless Parliament, 
and issued a manifesto against Mayenne and the chiefs of the 
League. Henry of Navarre carried on the war energetically. 
In two months he was master of the territory between the 
Loire and the Seine, and fifteen thousand Swiss and lanz- 
knechts joined him. On the evening of July 30th, 1589, the 
two kings, with forty thousand men, appeared before Paris. 
The Parisians could see the long line of the enemies' fires 
gleaming in a vast semicircle on the left bank of the Seine. 
The king of Navarre established his headquarters at Meudon ; 
Henry III., at Saint-Cloud. The great city was astounded ; 
the people had lost energy ; but the fury was concentrated 
in the hearts of the chiefs and in the depths of the cloisters. 
The Duchess of Montpensier neglected nothing that would 
increase the frenzy of the preachers. The arm of a fanatic 
became the instrument of the general fury, and put into 
practice the doctrine of tyrannicide more than once asserted 
in the schools and the pulpit. 

The assault was to be made on August 2d. On the morn- 



HENRY III. 363 

ing of the previous day a young friar from the convent of 
the Dominicans, Jacques Clement, came out from Paris and 
took the road to Saint-Cloud. He had prepared himself by 
fasting and the sacraments, and was furnished with a coun- 
terfeit letter for Henry III., and full directions. Conducted 
into the king's presence, he declared that he had "secret 
matters of great importance to communicate." The guards 
withdrew ; as the king approached him, the assassin drew 
a knife from his sleeve and plunged it into the king's abdo- 
men. " The wicked monk ! " cried the king ; " he has killed 
me ! " He drew the knife from the wound with his own 
hands and struck his murderer in the face. The guards, 
hearing the noise, hastened in and killed the assassin on 
the spot. Henry of Navarre hastened to the king, who 
urged upon him the expediency of his becoming a Catholic, 
and caused those present to swear allegiance to him as his 
successor. He died the same night, and with him the race 
of Valois became extinct. 

The aged Catherine de' Medici had died six months before, 
filled with despair, not even having the consolation of know- 
ing that her wicked life had served to advance her own 
children. After thirty years of toil and intrigues and 
crimes in the vain effort to secure power to her sons, she 
saw the last scion of her race threatened with destruction; 
the kingdom torn to pieces, the crown dishonored, and 
either the League or the Huguenots certain to triumph. 



364 



GENEALOGICAL TABLE. 



Genealogical Table of the Capetian House 

or Valois. 

(The date which follows each name is the date of death.) 

Charles, Count of Valois, son of Philip III. 

I 
Philip VI., king of France, 1350 

John the Good, 1364 



Charles V. the Wise, 1380 



Charles VI., 1422 Louis, Duke of Orleans, 

I ancestor of 

Charles VII., 1461 the houses of Valois-Orleans 

I and 

Iiouis XI., 1483 Valois-Augouleme - 

Charles VIII., 1498 



Philip the Bold, 

ancestor of 

the second Capetian house 

of Burgundy, 1404 

I 
John the Fearless, 1419 

Philip the Good, 1467 

Charles the Bold, 1477 



Mary, m. Archduke Maximilian 
Philip the Handsome 
Charles V. 



Charles, Duke of Orleans, 1465 

Iiouis XII., king, 1515 

Claude of France, wife of 
Francis I. 



John, Count of Angouleme 
Charles, Count of Angouleme, 1495 
Francis I., king, 1547 
Henry II., 1559 



Francis II., Charles IX., Henry III., 

1560 1574 1589 



Elizabeth., Margaret, 

wife of wife of 

Philip II., of Spain Henry IV.i 



1 Beatrice of Bourbon married, in 1272, Robert, Count of Clermont, sixth son of 
Saint Louis. Their descendants founded the ducal branch of Bourhon, which became 
extinct in 1503 ; and the junior branches of La Marche, extinguished in 1438 ; of Mont- 
pensier, in 1527; and of Vendome, which continued till Henry IV., and was then 
divided into two branches, — that of Bourhon-Vendome, which acquired the kingdom 
of Navarre by the marriage of Antoine, and that of the princes of La Roohe-sur-Yon, 
dukes of Moutpensier, extinct in 1608; and finally, that of Bourbon- Conde, founded 
by Louis, uncle of Henry IV., and chief of the Calvinist party. The great Cond6 was 
bis great-grandson. 



REIGN OF HENRY IV. 365 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

REIGN OF HENRY IV. 
(1589-1598 A.I>.) 

Henry IV. ; his First Difficulties. — The assassination of 
the Valois brought grief and trouble into the camp of Saint- 
Cloud, and joy and confidence into Paris, where bonfires 
were lighted and the "martyrdom of the blessed Jacques 
Clement " was eulogized from the pulpits : he was even 
invoked as a saint. 

" You are the king of the brave," said one of the Catholic 
lords to Henry, '' and will be abandoned only by cowards." 
But in spite of this loyal speech, many Catholics withdrew ; 
in order to secure others, Henry solemnly promised, in an 
assembly of the principal lords, to sustain the Catholic 
religion in his kingdom until the meeting of a national 
or general council which should regulate the religious ques- 
tion, to insure to every one his rights and ofiices, and to 
guarantee to the Calvinists liberty of worship in one town 
in each bailliage. The assembly then acknowledged him 
as king of France, under the title of Henry IV. 

The Leaguers hesitated between the young Duke of Guise 
and his uncle, the Duke of Mayenne. The former was a 
prisoner in the hands of the royalists ; the latter, though a 
shrewd politician, was wanting in all those characteristics 
which go to make a popular chief, — daring, brilliancy, in- 
defatigable activity, and prompt decision. There were other 
claimants of the throne, — the Duke of Lorraine, the Duke 
of Savoy, and the king of Spain. Mayenne might have taken 
fortune by the horns, but he dared not do it, and so caused 
the cardinal of Bourbon to be proclaimed king under the 
title of Charles X., contenting himself with the ofiice of 
lieutenant-general; thus unwisely recognizing the right of 
the house of Bourbon. 

But Henry IV.'s declaration had not satisfied every one 
in the royal army. D'^fipernon and several Catholic lords 
retired ; La Tr^mouille, with nine Protestant battalions, set 



366 REIGN OF HENRY IV. 

out for the South, unwilling " to serve under the banner of 
a sovereign who undertook to protect idolatry." The be- 
sieging army was reduced by one-half. Several of his 
friends counselled the king to return to the South ; but 
Henry decided to remain in the North, and this resolution 
saved his crown. 

Division of France. — France, and indeed almost every 
province of France, was divided, — one city being for the 
League and another for the king. One sixth part of France 
was on the side of the king ; the rest was not entirely on 
the side of the League. Several cities and provinces re- 
mained neutral ; a few governors or powerful nobles awaited 
the course of events. 

Campaign of Henry IV. in Normandy; Battle of Arques 
(1589). — The true king would be made known by his deeds. 
Henry IV. sent Longueville into Picardy, D'Aumont into 
Champagne, to raise troops and money, and went himself 
into Normandy. An attack upon Rouen was a failure ; but 
Henry, turning suddenly to Dieppe, was received there 
with open arms. This was a precious acquisition, for it 
gave him' communication with England. The great Queen 
Elizabeth saw plainly that the king of Navarre was fighting 
for her as well as for himself. 

At Paris the people were beginning to complain of the 
slowness of Mayenne. He finally decided to leave the city 
with twenty-five thousand men, recruited eight thousand on 
the way, and marched towards Dieppe, promising to bring 
" the Bearnais " back a captive or throw him into the sea. 
Henry, who had less than ten thousand men, entrenched 
himself strongly around Dieppe, having his camp on the 
heights of Arques. 

For three whole weeks the great army of Mayenne made 
constant attacks upon these well-chosen positions ; but 
Henry and his valiant troops repulsed them everywhere. 
Mayenne then turned the royal camp and appeared upon 
the west side of Dieppe. But Henry suspected his inten- 
tions and forestalled him. He had received from England 
twelve thousand men, provisions, and the promise of an 
additional re-enforcement of four thousand men. -Longue- 
ville, La None, and D'Aumont came to his assistance with 
another army. Mayenne retired to the Somme, calling to 
his aid the Spaniards in the Netherlands. 

Attempt to surprise Paris ; Successes of the King (1589). 



REIGN OF HENRI IV. 367 

— Henry, in turn, now found himself at the head of twenty- 
five thousand men. He gained three days' march upon 
Mayenne and moyed rapidly upon Paris. Under cover of 
a thick fog all the outskirts on the left bank were taken, 
the royalists entering with the cry of " Saint-Bartholomew." 
The movement nearly succeeded ; but hearing of the arrival 
of Mayenne, Henry contented himself with pillaging the out- 
skirts, thinking to satisfy the soldiers with this in place of 
the pay which he had not been able to give them, and then 
took the road to Tours, the capital of the royalist party. 

On the way he captured various towns, and induced others 
to recognize him. In a few weeks the whole of ISTormandy 
was subjugated. The news of his success attracted the neu- 
trals. Among foreign states the republic of Venice recog- 
nized him as the legitimate king ; even Sixtus V. began to 
waver. 

Dissensions in the Party of the League. — The rival ambi- 
tions of the enemies of Henry IV. helped his cause. The 
dukes of Lorraine and Savoy endeavored to dismember the 
kingdom. The dukes of Mercoeur, ISTevers, and Nemours 
sought to obtain independent principalities. Philip II. de- 
manded the title of protector of the kingdom in the name 
of his daughter. The Sixteen dreamed of a state without 
king and without nobles, a sort of theocratic republic. May- 
enne also had his secret hopes. 

Battle of Ivry (1590). — The king besieged Dreux. May- 
enne, in order to save the city, gave battle in the plain of 
Saint-Andre, near Ivry (March 14th). The Leaguers had 
fifteen or sixteen thousand men, of whom four thousand 
were cavalry ; the royalists had eight thousand infantry 
and three thousand horsemen armed only with swords and 
pistols. " My friends," cried Henry, " keep your ranks in 
good order ; if you lose your ensigns, cornets, or guides, 
the white plume that you see on my helmet will lead you 
always on the road to honor and glory." 

The king charged the Prench and Walloon lancers ; he 
passed with his men under their long, heavy lances, fought 
them furiously hand to hand, cut and thrust, and put them 
to flight. At the end of two hours the whole army of the 
League was flying. The victory won, Henry remembered 
that he was king; "Quarter for the French," he cried; 
"death to the foreigners." The road to Paris was now 
open to them, and Henry led them thither. 



368 REIGN OF HENRY IV. 

Siege of Paris (1590). — There was but little ammunition 
in the city and great scarcity of provisions, and the walls 
were in bad condition. The Parisians made up for these 
deficiencies by their religions enthusiasm. The papal leg- 
ate, Cajetano, issued, through the Sorbonne, a decree declar- 
ing any one who should speak of treating with the Bourbon 
guilty of deadly sin, and promising to his enemies the mar- 
tyr's palm. Thirty thousand men enlisted ; the bells were 
melted down to make cannon ; a brother of Mayenne, the 
young Duke of Nemours, directed the defence. Henry IV. 
scarcely hoped to carry by assault a city thus defended, but 
he counted upon famine, and cut off all means of communi- 
cation, expecting thus to reduce the Parisians. They en- 
dured the sufferings cf famine with the same courage with 
which they had encountered the war. The death of the old 
cardinal of Bourbon simplified the question (May, 1590), 
but increased the hatred of the Leaguers. The king made 
an assault July 24th ; at the end of two hours the faubourgs 
were taken. 

The distress was now at its height. All the horses, asses, 
and mules that still sur\dved were killed. Everything that 
had life, even unclean animals, were hunted down and de- 
voured. Some powdered the bones of the dead and made 
of them a sort of paste, but died from eating this dreadful 
food. The soldiers began to steal children, and one mother 
devoured her own infant. 

Intervention of the Duke of Parma and the Spaniards 
(1590) ; of the English and Germans (1591). — Fearing lest he 
should lose the Netherla^nds, then greatly disturbed by the 
exploits of Maurice of ISTassau, Philip II. had deferred till 
the last moment sending his best general to aid the Paris- 
ians. But now the Duke of Parma advanced, and reached 
Meaux in August, at a most ox)portune moment, for the 
siege had lasted four months. The king went out to meet 
the Spaniards. Parma, the skilful tactician, skirmished 
with the French, thus occupying them for four days, and 
on the fifth, under cover of a thick fog, he surprised Lagny, 
which commanded the arrival of supplies to Paris by way 
of the Marne, and from that town he sent a large flotilla of 
boats to reprovision the city. All the efforts of a laborious 
siege had now been wasted. During the winter the Viscount 
of Turenne, one of the wisest of the king's party, obtained 
seven hundred Englishmen from Elizabeth, two thousand 



REIGN OF HENRY IV. 369 

Hollanders from Maurice, and raised in Germany four thou- 
sand horse, and eight thousand infantry, whom he brought 
away with him. Henry IV. had just captured Chartres, 
the granary of Paris. As nineteen of the bishops of France 
had acknoAvledged him, Henry held in this city a national 
council which declared null and void the excommunications 
recently issued against him by Pope Gregory XIV. It was 
useless to dream of taking Paris, now garrisoned by four 
thousand Spaniards ; but Henry, in order to lay siege to the 
capital from a distance, and cut off its communications with 
Normandy, appeared suddenly before Eouen (ISTovember, 
1591). 

Siege of Rouen (1591-1592). — The League here was 
very strong, and the defence was under the command of 
Villars-Brancas, governor of Normandy, a man of much 
energy and enterprise. The Duke of Parma came again 
from the Netherlands to save the city (March, 1592). 
Henry left Biron with his infantry to continue the siege, 
and at the head of his cavalry, composed of sev6n thousand 
brave and active men, went to meet the enemy, whom he 
engaged successfully at Aumale. Meanwhile Biron was 
forced to raise the siege of Eouen (April) . The Duke of 
Parma entered the town and secured the j)assage of the 
Seine, but received a wound which, from the bad condition 
of his health, proved fatal. While he was disabled, Henry 
IV. attacked his army at Yvetot, killed three thousand of 
his men, and shut him up in a position which seemed des- 
perate, between the Seine and the sea. Parma, however, 
extricated himself from the trap, and regained the Nether- 
lands without molestation, but died at Arras in December. 
Twice had this great warrior snatched victory from the 
king's hands ; but happily the League was itself working 
for Henry IV. 

Mayenne and the Sixteen. — A secret struggle had been 
going on for some time between Mayenne and the Sixteen ; 
that is, between the aristocratic faction and the democratic 
faction of the League ; between the French party and the 
Spanish party. Mayenne's reverses and the first successes 
of the Duke of Parma placed power in the hands of the 
Sixteen. The young Duke of Guise escaped from Tours 
and hastened to Paris, full v)f enthusiasm and hatred against 
the king. The Sixteen believed they had found in him the 
chief who would suit them. 



370 BEIGN OF HENRY IV. 

During the last operations around Eouen the preaching 
at Paris took a very savage turn. Some said openly that 
assassination should be resorted to ; others demanded a new 
massacre, this time of the politiques. President Brisson 
and two counsellors of the Parliament were seized and 
executed; their death was the signal for the murder of a 
number of suspected persons. The aim of the conspiracy 
was to assure to themselves the control of the States, 
which were about to assemble, then to cause them to elect a 
Catholic king, pledged to establish the Inquisition in Prance, 
to respect the restored rights of the clergy and the com- 
munes, and to submit to the resolutions passed by the 
States, henceforth to be assembled every five years. Their 
purpose was, in a word, as far as religion was concerned, to 
introduce into Prance the system which had been so fatal 
in Italy and Spain ; and with regard to politics, to destroy 
the great work of national unity, which had been going on 
for nearly three centuries. 

On his return to Paris, Mayenne caused four of the Six- 
teen to be seized and beheaded, broke up their council, 
and conferred the municipal functions upon declared jpoli- 
tiques (February, 1592). The Leaguers were filled with 
consternation. Mayenne had thus rendered a conspicuous 
service to Prance though not to himself. 

States-General of the League (1593) ; Philip II. ; the Satire 
Menippee. — It was evident to all that war was affording no 
solution of the question. Prance might be engulfed in it, 
but one party would not destroy the other. The idea of a 
compromise now suggested itself to many minds. Each 
faction had, till now, repulsed the idea of convoking the 
States-General, counting on its own strength and fearing to 
stake its fortunes upon the votes of an assembl}''. But now 
their name was on many lips, and a great number demanded 
that the nation should be allowed to speak for itself. 

The States finally assembled at Paris, January 15th, 1593. 
Only about a hundred and thirty deputies appeared, mostly 
of the Third Estate. The king of Spain spared no expense. 
If the Spanish historians have computed correctly, his 
designs upon Prance cost him 30,000,000 ducats (about 
$100,000,000). Henry had expended only heroism, — 
enough, indeed, to have gained a kingdom, — but the faith 
he professed was an insurmountable obstacle ; the chief of 
the Protestants could not be king of the Catholics. The 



REIGN OF HENRY IV. 371 

ties wMeh bound Henry to Calvinism had never been very- 
strong, and he now determined to break them in order to 
put an end to this atrocious and otherwise interminable war. 
Mayenne had but little to offer ; he did not despair of suc- 
ceeding, however, by playing off the foreigner and the 
heretic against each other. The king assembled at Mantes, 
May 18th, several prelates and doctors, both from the royal 
party and from that of the League, for the purpose of " dis- 
cussing the differences, on account of which the schism had 
arisen in the Church." The Spanish ambassador was de- 
sirous of bringing matters to a head before the assembly of 
Mantes could make any compromise. On the 28th of May 
he made a formal proposition to the States to elect as their 
queen Isabella-Clara-Eugenia, daughter of Philip II., and 
granddaughter, on her mother's side, of King Henry II. of 
France. " To set aside the Salic law," cried a Leaguer, '' is to 
destroy the kingdom." Mayenne demanded two days for 
deliberation. When the time had expired, they were no 
nearer a conclusion than before. During the first general 
session the ambassador was asked whom the king had chosen 
as a husband for his daughter. "■ The archduke Ernest of 
Austria," he replied. There was a general burst of dissatis- 
faction. It appeared that France must be given to a foreign 
prince and a foreign princess ; and it was that very house 
of Austria against which the kings of France had fought 
for fifty years that the League now proposed to install in 
the Louvre. 

A remarkable pamphlet, the Satire Menippee (1594), the 
the work of some Parisian citizen, finally overwhelmed the 
League with ridicule. The Catholicon cV Espagyie, the first 
part of the satire, exposed the ambition which Philip con- 
cealed under the mask of championship of Catholicism ; in 
the Abrege des etats de la Ligue, each of the prominent per- 
sons who had played a part in the League was made to dis- 
play his pitiful ambitions and shameful avarice. And finally, 
a deputy of the Third Estate pointed out to each one the 
moral of the pamphlet, — the degradation of Paris and of 
France under foreign domination. 

Eeason began at last to rise above these waves of half- 
appeased passions. While the States contimied the long 
debates which ill concealed their indecision, some of the 
magistrates of the Parliament took courage. On the propo- 
sition of one of them Parliament rendered a decree by which 



372 REIGN OF HENRY IV. 

it ordered that " remonstrances should be made to the lieu- 
tenant-general to the effect that no treaty should be made 
for the purpose of transferring the crown to any foreign 
prince " (June 28). This was the first act of good sense 
and patriotism which had been done for a long time : Henry 
IV. did the second. 

Conversion of the King (1593) ; Entrance of Henry IV. 
into Paris (1594). — Though it cost the son of Jeanne 
d'Albret, the pupil of Coligny, a struggle to break with 
the Huguenots, he followed the advice of his wisest coun- 
sellors, and after a discussion of some hours with the 
Catholic doctors assembled at Mantes, he declared himself 
convinced. And it was true : not that he had thoroughly 
discussed dogmas, — i3hat was not the point with him, — but 
he had pondered well the ills of France. The next day he 
bade a tearful farewell to the ministers of the religion which 
he abandoned, and with a large escort took the road to the 
church of Saint-Denis. 

Having arrived at the door of the basilica, he knelt and 
made his confession of faith. " I swear," said he, " before 
Almighty God, to live and die in the faith of the Catholic 
religion ; to protect and defend it against all persons, at the 
peril of my life, renou.ncing all heresies contrary thereto." 

A few preachers of the League vainly attempted to pre- 
sent this as an act of hypocrisy. The greater part regarded 
the conversion as the pledge of a patriotic reconciliation. 
The States declared that they had no power to regulate the 
succession to the throne, and broke up in the midst of gen- 
eral indifference. In the provinces the reaction was more 
pronounced. The coronation, which took place in the cathe- 
dral of Chartres (February 27th, 1594), increased this feeling. 
Henry helped on the result by wise negotiations. Thus he 
bought Paris from Brissac, repaying him with a marshal's 
baton, the governments of Mantes and Corbeil, and two hun- 
dred thousand crowns. 

Brissac carried out his bargain. On the morning of 
March 21st four thousand picked men presented themselves 
at the gates. Unopposed and in good order they passed on 
to the centre of Paris and quietly occupied the principal 
positions. At first the people seemed stunned ; but when 
the king appeared, escorted by Brissac and the provost of 
the merchants, cries of " Hurrah for peace ! long live the 
king ! " saluted him. When the Spanish garrison of three 



REIGN OF HENRY IV. 373 

thousand men realized that the king was in the Louvre, and 
the whole city quiet and contented, they submitted to march 
out with the honors of war. "Gentlemen," said Henry, 
with his habitual irony, " commend me to your master, and 
never come back." 

Submission of the Leaguers. — The king had possession 
of the capital, where the Sorbonne, reconstructed, acknowl- 
edged him as the true and lawful king : but he did not have 
the whole of Prance; the Spaniards were still within its 
borders, and the chief Leaguers reckoned on coming out of 
this long contest with well-filled hands. 

Henry marched first against the Spaniards and the Lor- 
rainers, strongly entrenched in a few positions on the north- 
ern frontier, particularly at Laon. One of his most devoted 
followers, whose importance was increasing daily, Maximilian 
de Bethune, Baron of Eosny, afterwards Duke of Sully, was 
entrusted with the drawing up of the treaties. Biron, the 
son of the late marshal, captured Laon, The constant be- 
sieging of the Leaguers through the promises and money 
of Sully had still more prompt results. Yillars-Brancas, 
Guise, and the Duke of Lorraine surrendered in considera- 
tion of important offices and enormous pensions. 

War with Spain ; Battle of Fontaine-Francaise (1595). — 
Spain alone kept up the resistance of the remaining Lea- 
guers, and delayed the grant of papal absolution which was 
still necessary to Henry IV. A Jesuit, named Jean Chatel, 
having tried to assassinate the king, the Jesuits were ban- 
ished from the kingdom, January, 1595. In the same month 
Henry solemnly declared war against Philip II. Philip 
ordered the governor of the Milanese to march into Pranche- 
Comt^, and Puentes, governor of the Netherlands, to enter 
Picardy. Henry IV. hastened to meet the former and re- 
ncAved in Burgundy his deeds of rash heroism. Surprised 
with Marshal Biron near Pontaine-Fran9aise by the enemy's 
army, he ten times risked his own life, but succeeded in frus- 
trating the attempts of the Spaniards. Meantime Puentes 
arrived upon the Somme and captured several towns 

The Absolution of the King (September, 1595). — The abso- 
lution so long demanded of the Pope by Henry IV. happily 
made amends for these reverses. Philip threatened in vain. 
The king's two ambassadors having abjured heresy in the 
name of Henry, and promised the publication of the decrees 
of the Council of Trent, with the exception of those which 



374 REIGN OF HENRY IV. 

might excite trouble, the Pope pronounced formal absolu- 
tion, amid the acclamations of the people. The king, more- 
over, henceforth fulfilled entirely and minutely the duties 
of a good Catholic. , 

Submission of Mayenne, Epernon and Joyeuse (1596). — 
Mayenne regarded this event as the signal for his surrender. 
He gave up his remaining strongholds and received in ex- 
change the government of Burgundy, three cities as guar- 
antees, and three hundred and thirty-five thousand crowns. 
Thenceforth he served the king faithfully, as did also his 
nei^hew, the Duke of Guise ; Epernon and Joyeuse also made 
terms. The king refused nothing, being sure of regaining 
all some day, when he should have reduced to order the 
chaos bequeathed him by the League. 

Assembly of Notables at Rouen (1596) . — The first neces- 
sity was to raise money. Henry, for this purpose, called an 
assembly of notables at Kouen, and said to them with that 
unceremonious good-nature which concealed great tact, and 
which won for him all hearts : " If I wished to gain the 
title of orator, I should have learned some long and grace- 
ful speech, and delivered it to you with great gravity ; but, 
gentlemen, I desire a more glorious title, that of liberator 
and restorer of the State. ... I have not called you to- 
gether, as my predecessors have done, to force you to ap- 
prove my wishes ; I have assembled you that I may receive 
your counsels, trust in them, and be guided by them ; in 
short, with the desire to place myself under your tutelage, 
a desire which seldom comes to kings, greybeards, and vic- 
torious warriors. But the great love I bear my subjects, 
and the desire I have to add these two great titles to 
that of king, make all this seem easy and honorable for me." 

Henry had no desire to be taken at his word. He placed 
as high an estimate upon his kingly power as any king of 
his time. Under the accumulated ruins of so many wars 
Henry IV. found and resumed, without fresh effort, the 
absolute authority of Francis I. ; for neither the sacerdotal 
democracy of the League nor the selfish feudalism of the 
nobility had done anything to establish true and perma- 
nent liberties. • The assembly of Eouen was useless ; impracti- 
cable plans were proposed, and Henry was consequently the 
more at liberty to execute his own. He had something 
better than the good counsel that the notables gave him, 
and this was Sully, the personified genius of order. 



REIGN OF HENRY IV. 375 

Surprise of Amiens (1597) ; Surrender of Mercceur. — But 

the time for reforms had not yet fully come, for the time of 
trials had not yet passed. In 1596 the Spaniards had taken 
Calais; the following year they entered Amiens by an 
ingenious stratagem. Henry was at his capital in the 
midst of festivities, when he learned that the Spaniards 
were in Amiens, thirty leagues from Paris. "Enough of 
being king of France," said he ; " now I must be the king 
of Navarre ! " And he put on his armor. He hastened to 
Amiens with Biron and his splendid artillery, all his north- 
ern nobles, and twenty thousand men. Eosny supplied the 
ammunition and provisions. An army came from the Neth- 
erlands to raise the siege, but returned without having 
effected anything. Amiens surrendered. The rapidity of 
this operation increased the reputation of the king among 
foreigners and exhibited the strength of France. Mercoeur, 
the last of the great chieftains of the League, made his 
submission. 

Edict of Nantes (April 13, 1598). — A few days after, 
Henry also brought the religious war to an end by the treaty 
of peace which bears the name of the Edict of Nantes. 
Since his conversion the Calvinists had maintained a sullen 
attitude towards him. Several nobles of the reformed party 
had followed his example, but the mass of the people, and 
especially the ministers, resisted. In vain the king flattered 
them with that graceful good-nature which won all hearts ; 
he had to contend against serious convictions and characters 
which never bent under the pressure of interested motives. 
Happily the leaders had had enough of war ; besides, Henry 
offered them good and just conditions, such as L'Hdpital 
had promised them thirty-six years before.: liberty of con- 
science first of all, liberty of worship within their own 
castles, in all towns where their worship had already been 
established, or at least in one city or town in each bailliage. 
The schools and public offices were thrown open to them. 
Certain towns were given them in guarantee, and chambers 
composed equally of Protestants and Catholics were to give 
judgment in the parliaments of Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, 
and Bordeaux, in cases in which Protestants were concerned. 
Finally, they were given the right to assemble every three 
years by representatives, to present their complaints to the 
government. This edict thus proclaimed at last the modern 
principle of tolerance in matters of religion, and moreover 



376 REIGN OF HENRY IV. 

tliat other principle, that the State should rise above relig- 
ious partisanship, and compel all to respect the public 
peace. 

Treaty of Vervins (1698). — Nineteen days after (May 
2d), the deputies of the king signed at Vervins a treaty of 
peace with Spain. Philip II., defeated by England, by the 
United Provinces of the Netherlands, and by him whom he 
called the Prince of Beam, saw, after so many efforts, his am- 
bitious designs frustrated, his monarchy, like himself, ex- 
hausted and dying. He wished at least to end his days in 
peace. The treaty of Vervins (1598) established between the 
two states the boundaries laid out forty years before by the 
treaty of Cateau-Cambresis. Prance and Spain, it seemed, 
came back to the same starting-point. But one reached it 
exhausted in strength and almost lifeless, while the other 
was full of youth and enthusiasm. The gloomy despotism of 
Philip II. had thrown Spain into a decline from which two 
centuries have not been able to arouse her; the reign of 
Henry IV. inaugurated by conciliatory measures one of the 
greatest periods in the history of Prance. During these forty 
years frightful calamities had passed over the country ; but 
a great question had been settled ; France remained Catho- 
lic without the Inquisition, retained the strong royal power 
which was still necessary to her, and did not go back five 
centuries to return to feudal and municipal anarchy. 

The Acquisition of Bresse and Bugey (1601). — Savoy had 
taken advantage of the embarrassments of France to seize 
upon the marquisate of Saluzzo. Henry declared war 
(1600), and compelled her to give up to him in exchange 
Bresse and Bugey ; that is to say, the whole country from 
Lyons to Geneva. These were only small acquisitions, but 
they were of serious importance to Prance, inasmuch as 
they covered Lyons on the side toward Switzerland and cut 
off communication between Pranche-Comt6, a Spanish pos- 
session, and Savoy, whose duke was under the influence of 
the Spanish governor of the Milanese. 



TWELFTH PERIOD. 

The Re-establishment of Internal Oeder by 
Royalty, and the Second Struggle of France 

AGAINST the HoUSE OF AUSTRIA (1598-1659). 
CHAPTER XLVII. 

REORGANIZATION OP FRANCE BY HENRY IV. 
(159^-1610 AD.) 

State of France. — In 1598 Henry IV. had driven out the 
foreigners, reconciled Catholics and Protestants, and es- 
tablished peace in the interior and on the frontiers. It 
was now necessary to heal all the wounds that France had 
received. A contemporary estimated that since 1580 eight 
hundred thousand persons had perished by war and massa- 
cre ; that nine cities had been levelled with the ground, two 
hundred and fifty villages burned, and one hundred and 
twenty-eight thousand houses destroyed. And since that 
period, which preceded the formation of the League, how 
numerous were the ruins of another sort ! Workmen with- 
out work, commerce interrupted, agriculture desolated, rob- 
bery everywhere ; and from the midst of all this desolation 
Henry IV. must endeavor to resuscitate France. The 
nobility had proposed one way out of the difficulty ; they 
offered him all the money necessary for the government and 
for the maintenance of the army, on condition of a virtual 
restoration of feudalism. This was far from according 
with Henry's designs. 

Sully. — Henry had already fixed upon the man who 
should aid him in this work, more difficult than that of 
battle-fields : a man of strong good sense, a brave heart, and 



378 REORGANIZATION OF FRANCE BY HENRY IV. 

above all a well-balanced mind, the Protestant Maximilian 
of Bethune, afterwards Duke of Sully. He was born in the 
castle of Rosny, near Mantes, in 1560, At the time of the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew he was studying in Paris, 
but escaped by presence of mind. He attached himself to 
the king of Navarre, followed him through all his adven- 
tures and battles, showing himself as brave as the bravest. 
He was not a knight after the fashion of the paladins of 
romance ; for while he attended thoroughly to his master's 
business, he had an eye to his own affairs, married a wealthy 
heiress, and did not scorn the emoluments of war. But in 
his devotion to the prince and the State, this prudent man- 
ager cut down his forests of Eosny, and gave the money 
thus procured to Henry in his need ; and the zealous Prot- 
estant counselled the king to end the war by avowing him- 
self a Catholic. 

In 1596 Henry appointed him a member of the financial 
council, and after the peace of Vervins he held the position 
of superintendent of finances and grand overseer of the 
roads of Prance (1598), then that of grand master of the 
artillery (1601). He preserved his honesty and his recti- 
tude of character as well as his religion, and was the friend 
as well as the minister of the king. 

Financial Reforms. — The disorder of the finances was 
extreme. The public debt was estimated at 345,000,000. 
France paid annually more than 170,000,000 in taxes. The 
net revenue scarcely amounted to 30,000,000, of which 
19,000,000 had to be deducted to meet the engagements 
of the State. Almost all the royal domain was mortgaged. 
From one end to the other of the financial administration 
there was theft. Sully undertook to have reports made on 
every point, to have accurate accounts kept, to establish a 
balance between receipts and expenditures, to take invento- 
ries of all the resources of the country, province by province, 
and of all branches of service, and to fix the annual budget 
of expenses. The proceeds of the principal taxes were thus 
almost doubled without any additional expense to the coun- 
try. A court of justice prosecuted dishonest agents, and 
the tax-collectors were forced to keep strict accounts. The 
governors had been in the habit of levying arbitrary taxes in 
their provinces ; the lords, upon their vassals. He put an 
end to the profits thus derived by these pilferers, and the 
taxes imposed by the king were consequently more produc- 



REORGANIZATION OF FRANCE BY HENRY IV. 379 

tive. He revised all claims against tlie state, annulled 
many, and reduced the interest from 8^ per cent to 6^ per 
cent. He took an account of all the leases on which the 
public taxes were farmed, and raised the price of them. A 
number of useless offices, fraudulent annuities, and illegal 
exemptions were suppressed, and others diminished in 
magnitude. Many persons who had taken upon themselves 
the title of noble were restored to the class of taxables. 
Hereditary tenure of office, officially constituted in 1504, by 
the annual payment of the paulette, was a less honorable 
device, but that also helj^ed the treasury. The great strict- 
ness in matter of receipts was balanced by a wise economy 
in matters of expenditure. Consequently at the end of the 
reign of Henry IV. his government had paid 147,000,000 of 
debts, bought back 80,000,000 of domains, cut off 8,000,000 
of annuities, reduced the taxation from 30,000,000 to 26,000,- 
000, of which the treasury realized 20,000,000, spent 40,- 
000,000 in fortifications or on public works, made provision 
for the service for the current year, and amassed a reserve 
of 20,000,000 livres. 

Agriculture. — Henry IV. took an equal interest in the 
three sources of public wealth, — agriculture, commerce, and 
industry ; Sully was more exclusively in favor of agricul- 
ture. He went twice through all the provinces (1596 and 
1598), so as. to study for himself the needs of the country, 
and in 1600 remitted to the people their arrears of the 
tallies, amounting to 20,000,000, and reduced the land-tax 
1,800,000 livres. Finally, in 1601, he permitted the expor- 
tation of grain — a bold measure for this period, but a very 
wise one, which would enrich the country instead of impov- 
erishing it. He also favored the draining of mal'shes. 

A Protestant gentleman of Languedoc, Olivier de Serres, 
deserves to be called the father of French agriculture, oii ac- 
count of the rules he laid down in his Thedtre de V Agri- 
culture and his Menage des Champs, and which he put 
into practice himself on his model farm. When Henry IV. 
received his book he ordered a certain number of pages to be 
read to him every day after his dinner. Many others read 
it and followed the advice which it gave. Thus farming 
made rapid progress, and until the wars of Louis XIV. 
French agriculturists took the lead in Europe. There was 
not a single year of scarcity from 1598 to 1626. 

Industry and Commerce. — Sully thought that field labor 



380 REORGANIZATION OF FRANCE BY HENRY IV. 

made men good soldiers. The worthy gentleman feared 
that manufacturing industry would weaken the French. He 
was entirely opposed to the importation of foreign industries 
and modes of cultivation. Henry IV. was of a different 
opinion. He endeavored to establish in France the raising 
of the silkworm. A similar purpose is evinced in the 
foundation of manufactories of the fine crape of Bologna, 
of gold thread of the kind made at Milan, of high-warp 
tapestries, of gilt leather, glass, crystal, mirrors, and linen 
of the Dutch style, etc. This was a more successful plan 
for keeping money in the kingdom than Sully's prohibitions 
of its export had been. In 1604 the king convoked an 
assembly of commerce. Among other things proposed by it 
was a general reformation of the guilds and trade corpora- 
tions. 

Maritime Affairs ; Colonies. — The military marine devel- 
oped by Francis I. had fallen very low. Sully had no 
aversion to the navy ; but he did not desire colonies for 
France, and would willingly have left to the people of Spain, 
the Netherlands, and England the care of conquering and 
peopling distant countries. Henry IV. was more far-sighted 
than his minister ; in order to encourage trade with North 
America, he sent Champlain to Canada to found Port Royal 
(now Annapolis) in 1604, and Quebec in 1608. Henry even 
planned the establishment of an East India Company which 
should rival those established by England and Holland. 
He did not live to realize this project, but he signed an 
advantageous commercial treaty with Turkey. 

Public Works ; the Canal of Briare. — Many roads were 
laid out by Sully. The plan of the great canals which have 
since been cut throughout France was then conceived. One 
only was finished, — that of Briare. This was the first, except 
in Italy, which had locks uniting two levels ; its length is 
fifty-five kilometers, and it connects the Loire and the 
Seine. 

The Army. — In 1595 there were only four regular regi- 
ments ; Henry increased them to eleven. But the custom 
of hiring foreign troops continued. The cavalry continued 
to form much the larger part of the army, the nobility being 
unwilling to serve as infantry. The artillery under Sully's 
management assumed great importance. Since 1572 no 
lord had been allowed to have cannon in his castle with- 
out express permission from the king. Sully caused a 



REORGANIZATION OF FRANCE BY HENRY IV. 381 

number of fortresses to be repaired, and stocked the arsenals 
which had been left empty by the civil war. 

Arts and Letters under Henry IV. — Though not lov- 
ing the arts as Francis I., Henry II., and Charles IX. had 
done, Henry IV. appreciated the fact that they shed lustre 
upon the reign of a king. He therefore accepted the heri- 
tage of the Renaissance, which had unhappily now come 
almost to its decay. He had much work done upon the 
chateau of Fontainebleau ; at Saint-Germain he constructed 
the new chateau. He began two new pavilions at the 
Tuileries, and intended extending the great gallery of 
the Louvre so far as to join that palace. He finished also 
the front of the Hotel de Ville and the Pont ISTeuf, com- 
menced under Henry III. In 1604 was laid the corner-stone 
of the Palais Eoyal at Paris, in which appears the mixed 
structure of brick, stone, and slate, — a style revived from 
ancient Italian architecture. 

The Renaissance abandons its capricious liberty ; method, 
regularity, and law everywhere replace the bold and often 
irregular but powerful and original independence of the 
sixteenth century. In politics, the royal authority was 
advancing toward that irresistible power which was estab- 
lished by Eichelieu and Louis XIV. In literature, also, 
a king arose ; a tyrant of words and syllables, — Malherbe, 
a refined and tasteful scholar, rather than a great poet. A 
regulator of expressions and ideas, Malherbe produced but 
little besides odes and stanzas ; but in most of his works 
he attained perfection of form, and a few of his pieces 
are, even in thought and feeling, perfect models. He firmly 
established among the French the poetic language and 
style which were used by Corneille, Racine, and Boileau. 

The satirist, Mathurin Regnier, with his fantastic energy, 
revolted against Malherbe ; but in vain. Discipline would 
have its way in letters as well as in the State. Regnier 
wrote satires in verse ; the heir of Marot, with more malice, 
and a style which was often perfect, he dealt only with the 
ridiculous side of character, and did not go beneath the sur- 
face of things. The verse and prose writings of D'Aubigne, 
in spite of their real merits, are rather political efforts than 
literary works. The fiery Protestant continues with his pen 
the battle which he had so valiantly sustained Avith his 
sword. One ought also to mention, in connection with 
Henry IV., the Satire Menippee. 



382 REORGANIZATION OF FRANCE BY HENRY IV.' 

Popularity of the King ; Conspiracies. — The solicitude of 
Henry IV. for the prosperity of France had acquired for 
him a well-deserved popularity. The brilliant qualities of 
his mind and heart concealed weaknesses which, indeed, were 
easily forgiven by the people ; they saw in him only the 
king who promised the disabled soldiers an asylum, and the 
peasant a chicken in the pot every Sunday. 

But if the people blessed him, it was not so with certain 
parties and certain men, who were more dissatisfied with 
his strong policies than with all his faults. They forgave 
him his mistresses and his bastards : that sort of thing had 
been seen in every reign. Nevertheless, the favor shown to 
Gabrielle d'Estrees and Henriette d'Entraigues, forgotten 
promises, services rendered the king of Navarre which the 
king of France was unable to repay, caused some to mur- 
mur ; and his intense desire to be king in everything drove 
others into conspiracies. 

The most celebrated of the conspiracies was that of Mar- 
shal Biron, in which foreigners also had a hand. The Duke 
of Savoy and the king of Spain endeavored to incite the 
French nobles to revolt. The proud Biron, who had been 
created marshal, duke, a peer of France, and governor of 
Burgundy, considered these rewards still insuffiicient for his 
services, and so allowed himself to be seduced into treason. 
Once before, in 1601, Henry had pardoned him, and he would 
have pardoned him a second time if Biron would have agreed 
to the conditions that he demanded. Irritated by his ob- 
stinacy, and wishing to make him an example to the nobil- 
ity, he allowed his sentence to be executed : Biron was 
beheaded (1602). 

Plan for the Reorganization of Europe. — Spain had rea- 
son to be alarmed, for the power of the house of Austria 
was the continual subject of Henry's meditations. Sully 
suggested to him a plan for the reorganization of Europe, 
which was doubtless talked of, but the realization of which 
Henry was too clear-sighted to expect. The king, says 
Sully, desired to drive the house of Austria from the Neth- 
erlands, Italy, and Germany ; to make of Hungary, with the 
addition of the Austrian provinces, a powerful kingdom; 
to give Lombardy to Savoy, Sicily to Venice ; to form of 
the peninsula of Italy one great state having the Pope for 
its chief; to make Genoa and Florence, with the small 
neighboring lordships, into a republic. Europe, then, with 



REORGANIZATION OF FRANCE BY HENRY IV. 383 

six hereditary kingdoms, — France, Spain, England, Sweden, 
Denmark, and Lombardy ; with five elective governments, — 
Poland, Hnngary, Bohemia, the Empire, and the Papacy ; 
with four republics, — Venice, Genoa and Florence, Switzer- 
land, and the Netherlands, — would have formed one great 
republic, having a supreme council of deputies from all the 
states, whose duty should be to prevent encroachments and 
collisions. Henry would have asked nothing for France, 
excepting French-speaking districts, Savoy, Lorraine, Bel- 
gium, and Franche-Comt4. 

His designs upon the last two were capable of present ex- 
ecution. In order to accomplish them he counted on the 
alliance of England, on the Protestants of the Netherlands, 
and on those of Germany, the Evangelical Union. The Duke 
of Cleves and Jiilich had just died. Protestants and Cath- 
olics were already disputing for that rich possession ; this 
afforded an opportunity to interfere and to begin a war which 
the increasing hatred of the two religious parties in the Em- 
pire was making inevitable. The most extensive prepara- 
tions were made ; forty thousand men advanced towards the 
frontiers of Champagne. 

Assassination of Henry IV. (1610). — The alliance of Henry 
with the Protestants and the Turks alarmed the extreme 
Catholics. In vain he endeavored to jjreserve the friend- 
ship of the Pope, of whom he had obtained a divorce from 
Margaret of Valois, in order to marry, in 1600, the Pope's 
own niece, Mary de' Medici. In vain he had, in 1603, allowed 
the Jesuits to return to France, and granted their order the 
right to teach. In spite of all this, he was, in the eyes of 
many, the enemy of religion, and of this Franfois Pavaillac, 
a fanatic, was fully persuaded. 

Henry was anxious and sad; reports of plots reached 
him constantly ; already nineteen attempts to assassinate 
him had been frustrated ; he had cause to fear a twentieth. 
Before setting out for the war he yielded to the entreaties 
of his wife, who was anxious to be crowned. Ideas of im- 
pending assassination never left him. On the 14th of May, 
being urged to go to ride in order to shake off these gloomy 
feelings, he took an open carriage. He took with him the 
dukes of ^pernon and Montbazon, and five other lords, 
with no escort ; only a few gentlemen on horseback and a 
few footmen followed him. He drove towards the Arsenal, 
where he intended to visit Sully, who was ill. A blockade 



384 REORGANIZATION OF FRANCE BY HENRY IV. 

of vehicles on the way stopped the coach. Eavaillac, who 
had followed him on foot from the Louvre, jumped up upon 
a post and struck the king. "I am wounded," he cried, 
and threw up his arms. This movement exposed his left 
side, and the assassin dealt a second blow which pierced his 
heart. The king fell back without uttering a cry : he was 
dead. Ravaillac made no attempt to fly, and it was with 
difficulty that the people were prevented from tearing him in 
pieces. Two weeks after he was put to death with horrible 
tortures. 



LOUIS XIII. 385 



CHAPTER XL VIII. 

LOUIS XIII. 
(1610-1643 A.D.) 

Regency of Mary de' Medici. — Sully was expecting the 
king at the Arsenal, when a gentleman of his household 
came rushing in and said, " The king is fatally wounded." 
" My God ! " exclaimed Sully, " have pity on him, on us, and 
on the State. If he dies, France will fall into strange 
hands ! " 

Louis XIII. was not nine years old ; custom assigned the 
regency to the mothers of kings. Mary de' Medici, who was 
a foreigner and felt that she was not beloved by the French 
people, thought it necessary that a sort of legal sanction 
should be given to her authority. She addressed herself to 
the Parliament of Paris, as if these magistrates were repre- 
sentatives of the country. Ordered by Epernon to declare 
her regent, the magistrates obeyed ; later they remembered 
how a queen had recognized their right to dispose of royal 
authority. 

At 'first nothing appeared changed in the political system 
of France. Mary de' Medici retained the ministers of the 
preceding reign, including Sully. The projects of Henry 
IV. were apparently carried out under his administration : 
a royal declaration confirmed the edict of Nantes, and an 
army of ten thousand men went to take possession of Jiilich 
for the Protestant princes, the allies of France. 

Abandonment of the Policy of Henry IV. ; Concini. — But 
it happened, as it generally does when queens are kings, 
that affairs were subordinated to persons, which is a course 
of things directly opposed to true statesmanship. The gov- 
ernment became feeble and capricious. With a minor king, 
an incapable regent, a divided court, and turbulent princes, 
the action of France in foreign affairs was of course neutral- 
ized for a long time. Finding it necessary to make peace, 
Mary de' Medici turned towards the Spaniards ; she opened 
negotiations for the double marriage of her son with the 



386 LOUIS XIII. 

infanta and the prince of Spain with her daughter. Sully, 
opposing this new policy, was removed by the queen (1611). 
He died in 1641. 

The queen had for a long time confided in the Florentine 
Concini, who had great influence over her through his wife, 
Leonora Galigai. This woman, the daughter of a carpenter, 
was the queen's foster-sister, and had acquired an extraor- 
dinary influence over her. The authority of the queen- 
regent was shaken when an incapable foreigner took the 
place of the superior statesman who for twenty years had 
been associated with the good and evil fortunes of the house 
of Bourbon. The great nobles were allowed to plunder; 
Concini filled his jjockets from the treasury, bought the 
marquisate of Ancrc and the offices of first gentleman of the 
chamber, lieutenant-general of P^ronne, Amiens, and Diepjje, 
and put a finishing touch to his insolent success by taking 
the title of marshal, though he had never been present on a 
field of battle. Leonora, on her part, worked for the general 
good by selling pardons. 

First Revolt of the Nobles (1614). — The pretensions of 
the nobles increased with the weakness of the government. 
What they really wanted was provincial governorships for 
themselves and their families, cautionary towns, and the 
dismemberment of France. Many of the lords, on learning 
of the assassination, had shut themselves up in the most 
convenient cities, and some of them would not come out 
again. " The day of the kings has passed," they said, " this 
is the day of the lords." The first refusal by the queen- 
regent led to civil war. Cond6 took up arms and published 
a manifesto in which he accused the court of having lowered 
the nobility, ruined the finances, and oppressed the poor 
people. He ended, as was usual, by demanding the convo- 
cation of the States-G-eneral for the purpose of reforming 
the abuses. A great number of the lords ranged themselves 
under his flag, and at their head were the dukes of Venddme, 
Longueville, Luxemburg, and Mayenne. Since the time of 
the States of the League there had been a great lull in the 
popular passions. The party of the j^oUUqttes, wliich was 
born under L'Hdpital, and came into power undet Henry IV., 
comprised almost all the professional men and the lower 
classes. The experience so cruelly bought by the civil war 
had not been without effect. The nation compared the 
thirty-eight years of massacre and pillage with the twelve 



LOUIS xiii. 387 

years of prosperity whicli they had enjoyed while rallying 
around the throne, and left the great lords to work out 
among themselves their fruitless ambitions. Some of the old 
ministers of Henry IV. counselled the queen to take vigorous 
measures, but she preferred to treat at Sainte-Menehould 
(May, 1614) . The Prince of Conde received 450,000 livres 
in money ; the Duke of Mayenne, 300,000, '' that he might 
marry " ; Monsieur de Longueville, 100,000 livres, as a pen- 
sion, etc. Nothing was done for " the poor people." 

The States-General (1614). — The assembly of the States- 
General convened at Paris, Oct. 14, 1614. It was their 
last meeting until 1789. Among the deputies was a prelate 
of tAventy-nine years of age, Arniand Duplessis de Richelieu, 
bishop of Luyon, who had already won such a reputation in 
his profession as to be appointed orator by the clergy, on 
the day of the presentation of memorials (cahiers). 

The three orders were not in accord. The orator of the 
bourgeoisie having dared to say that the French people 
formed one large family of which the lords were the elder 
branch, and the Third Estate the younger, the nobility con- 
sidered the speech an affront and complained to the king. 
The clergy refused to take up any part of the public bur- 
dens, saying that it would be detracting from the glory of 
God. 

There was no greater harmony in the desires of the as- 
sembly. The clergy demanded the introduction into Prance 
of all the decrees of the council of Trent, which Parliament 
had thus far repudiated. The nobility insisted on the sup- 
pression of the paillette which, in establishing heredity of 
oflfices, had inaugurated the noblesse de robe. The Third Es- 
tate desired that the pensions paid to the great lords, which 
exceeded five millions and a half in amount, should be 
reduced, and that the ultramontane doctrines taught by 
some of the bishops should be condemned. It was not diffi- 
cult for the ministers to profit by these divisions ; they 
caused the building in which the States held their assembly 
to be closed. 

The assembly of 1614 does not deserve the discredit into 
which it has fallen ; it accomplished nothing, but it showed 
the progress of political education among the upper bour- 
geoisie. The speeches of their orators revealed a practical 
business intelligence and a desire for wise innovations 
which is astonishing. They demanded the summoning of 



388 LOUIS xiii. 

a general assembly of the kingdom at least every ten years, 
freedom of city elections, security for, and extension of, 
municipal privileges. In matters of fmance, the Third Estate 
desired a just division of the public burdens among the 
citizens, and the suppression of useless offices ; ^ with regard 
to justice, the equality of all in the eyes of the law, the 
enfranchisement of serfs, the abolition of exceptional tribu- 
nals, a mode of trial less slow and costly ; in respect to com- 
merce and industry, the suppression of internal customs 
duties, wardenships and masterships, freedom of trade 
throughout the kingdom, and the establishment of protec- 
tive duties on imported foreign merchandise ; in respect 
to the nobility, the reduction of the number of military 
offices, the abolition of new titles, the suppression of fort- 
resses in the interior of the kingdom, of useless or excessive 
pensions, and the strict repression of duels ; in respect to the 
Church, a more impartial distribution of its income, at the ex- 
pense of the excessively opulent benefices, and for the benefit 
of the very poor curacies, obligatory residence imposed on 
the bishops, and their appointment by the king from among 
three nominees. Such were the principal projects of re- 
form proposed by the Third Estate. ISTo attention was paid 
to them at that time. It is the work of ages to force into 
the mind of the masses what wise men have long dreamed 
of. But without speaking of the revolutionary assembly of 
1356, one can trace a continuous progress of the national 
tradition through all the various vicissitudes from 1484 to 
1614. Eichelieu, Colbert, Turgot, would not treat it with 
scorn, but would seek to satisfy some of its repeated de- 
mands ; the rest were to await the day when the nation 
should take up, of her own accord, all these desires of past 
generations, in order to do justice to them and to many others. 
Fresh Revolt of the Nobles ; Treaty of Loudun (1615- 
1616). — The malcontents, after having exhausted the money 
extorted by their first revolt, began a second, under the pre- 
text that the demands of the States had not been complied 
with. This time Cond6 induced the Protestants to join in. 
The Duke of Rohan aroused the people of the C6vennes. 

1 The people then paid thh-ty-iive millions of taxes, of which only 
16,200,000 ever reached the treasury ; and the minister estimated that 
the king needed nineteen millions for maintenance of his dignity and 
his household. Of this, one-half was spent for the court and the 
nobility. 



LOUIS XIII. 38'9 

The court was tlien occupied witli the preparations for a jour- 
ney to Bordeaux, where the king was to receive his betrothed 
bride, the infanta Anne of Austria, and to which he was to 
escort his sister, avIio was to espouse at tlie same time the 
prince of Spain. During the whole journey the court had 
been followed and often harassed by the soldiers of Cond6 and 
Eohan; it purchased a new peace at Loudun (May, 1616), 
Louis acknowledged the prince and his friends to be good 
and loyal subjects, and paid the troops which had been levied 
against him. Cond6 alone received 1,500,000 livres. Each 
revolt was more XDrofitable to him. This one had cost the 
State more than twenty millions. 

First Administration of Richelieu; Arrest of Conde (1616). 
— The queen reorganized the administration ; the bishop of 
Lu9on, whom the States of 1614 had brought into promi- 
nence, became grand almoner of the household, then a mem- 
ber of the council, where he attracted great attention. Con- 
cini found that the young prelate "knew more than all 
the graybeards." He bestowed upon him one of the " four 
offices of the house and crown of France," with the charge 
of foreign affairs. Rigorous measures were immediately 
adopted ; the Prince of Conde was arrested in the Louvre 
itself, and thrown into the Bastile ; his followers, who en- 
deavored to arouse Paris and the neighboring provinces, 
" heard themselves addressed in a tone which sounded more 
like His Eoyal Majesty than recent doings." Eichelieu loved 
to address himself to iDublic opinion. In a sort of manifesto 
he showed how the great nobles had been " seeking to estab- 
lish a separate tyranny in each province." The princes and 
their followers were declared guilty of lese-majesty, and 
deprived' of their dignities : three armies were sent into 
Picardy, Champagne, and Berry to crush the revolt. The 
royal cause would have triumphed this time if the king had 
not joined the malcontents in order to overthrow the minis- 
try and escape from tutelage. 

Death of Concini (1617). — Concini had only a vulgar 
ambition. He loved money ; the possession of power 
frightened him. He knew he was hated and threatened ; 
but it Avas from an unsuspected source that the danger came. 
Louis XIII. was then sixteen years old. This prince, whose 
character was gloomy and morose, lived in seclusion, kept 
away from affairs of state by his mother a.nd Concini, and 
surrounded only by a few pages to whom he was attached. 



390 LOUIS XIII. 

He formed a great friendship for liis falconer, a young son 
of a provincial family, named Albert de Luynes. Tlie king's 
favorite conceived tlie hope of displacing the qneen's. A 
secret conspiracy was entered into by Louis XIII., his 
falconer, and his gardener ; Vitry, the captain of the guards, 
received an order to arrest Concini and to kill him if he 
resisted. Accompanied by twenty gentlemen, Vitry met 
Marshal d'Ancre as the latter was going into the Louvre. 
He told him that he arrested him by the king's command, 
and at the same moment they shot him dead. The king 
appeared at the window, and the Louvre resounded with cries 
of " Long live the king ! " 

Leonora Galigai was accused of peculation, of plotting 
against the State, and above all of sorcery. She was be- 
headed in the Place de Gr5ve, and her body was thrown into 
the flames. Mary de' Medici was ordered to leave the 
court and retire to Blois ; Richelieu was exiled to his bish- 
opric (1617). 

Government of Albert de Luynes (1617-1621). — The great 
lords had approved the death of Concini, hoping to profit by it. 
But when they saw De Luynes appropriate the spoils of the 
marshal, become duke and peer of the realm, and governor 
of Picardy, marry a Rohan, and make his brothers dukes, 
they revolted again, nominally in favor of the queen-mother, 
so recently their enemy. De Luynes was not more success- 
ful in resisting them than Marshal d'Ancre had been ; the 
peace of Angouleme, brought about by Richelieu, granted 
Mary de' Medici the government of Anjou and three cau- 
tionary towns (1619). Subsequent attempts on her part 
proved unsuccessful, and she was glad to ask, through Richie- 
lieu, for the confirmation of the first trea.ty (1620) . 

Republican Organization of the Protestants. — A more for- 
midable rebellion broke out in the South : this was a religious 
war. Mary de' Medici and Louis XIII. had carried out the 
policy of Henry IV. with regard to the Protestants. But 
the Reformers had themselves gone far beyond the edict of 
Nantes. Seeing the queen-mother ally herself with Spain, 
they became defiant. In 1611 they had reorganized their 
eight hundred and six churches into sixteen provinces divided 
into districts. A consistory which met every week governed 
the church; a conference assembled every three months 
governed the district ; an annual synod took charge of the 
affairs of the province; national synods were to assemble 



tiL\ 



LOUIS XIII . 391 

every three years under an elected president ; and finally, 
two commissioners were to reside at the court, and act as 
intermediaries between tlie party and the king. It was a 
thoroughly democratic and representative republic in the 
heart of an absolute monarchy. The general assemblies 
would willingly have played the part of the States-General 
of the Netherlands. These pretensions alarmed the court, 
and some Catholics took offence at them. In certain cities 
the old hatred was again aroused. 

War with the Protestants; Death of Albert de Luynes 
(1621). — In 1617 an edict had re-established the Catholic 
religion in B^arn. The edict being ill carried out, the king 
entered Beam with an army. Immediately the whole 
Protestant party was in a tumult ; a general assembly con- 
vened at Rochelle, published a declaration of independence, 
levied troops, and offered the command of them to the Duke 
of Rohan (1621). De Luynes, whom Louis XIII. hastily 
made constable, marched against Montauban with fifteen 
thousand men. The city, having a naturally strong position, 
defended itself heroically. The siege, which began in 
August, had scarcely progressed at all in November. The 
constable was seized with a fever which carried him off 
(December, 1621). Louis XIII. continued the war alone, 
and conducted during the following year a very active cam- 
paign. The Duke of Eohan took advantage of a moment 
of weariness to obtain a treaty of peace which renewed 
the edict of Nantes, but forbade political meetings, and left 
to the Reformers only the fortresses of Montauban and 
Rochelle (October, 1622). 

Universal Disorder in the State. — De Luynes left the king- 
dom in a state of extreme weakness and disorder : the royal 
authority humiliated by continual revolts, the nobility dic- 
tating laws to the sovereign, and mistress of the provinces 
through the ofi&ces which were at their disposal; the 
Calvinists ready to separate themselves from the rest of the 
nation ; the old foreign policy of Francis I. and Henry IV. 
abandoned ; the kingdom without alliances and without con- 
sideration in Europe; and finally, the house of Austria 
inaugurating the Thirty Years' War by a succession of 
victories, and preparing for the subjugation of Europe by 
the ruin of German Protestantism. It was time for Riche- 
lieu to take the control of affairs. 

Administration of Eichelieu (1624-1642) ; Ms Designs. — 



392 LOUIS XIII. 

Mary de' Medici, having become reconciled to her son, ob- 
tained the cardinal's hat for her constant counsellor, the 
bishop of Lu^on. At the beginning of the year 1624 she 
appointed him a member of the council. At the end of a 
few months Richelieu had overruled or renewed the minis- 
try, turned out a new favorite, conquered Louis XIII. by the 
ascendency of a superior genius, and mapped out the policy 
which Avas to render illustrious a reign so gloomily begun. 

He has himself explained the whole plan of this policy : 
"When your Majesty," said he to Louis XIIL, "determined 
to give me at the same time membership in your councils and 
a large share of your confidence, I can truly say that the 
Huguenots divided the state with you, that the nobles acted 
as though they were not your subjects, and the more j)ower- 
ful governors of the x^i'ovinces as though they were sovereigns 
of their charges. I may say, moreover, that foreign alliances 
were scorned. ... I promised your Majesty to employ all 
my ability, and all the authority it should please you to 
delegate to me, in ruining the Huguenot party, in lower- 
ing the pride of the nobles, and in restoring your name to 
the position it should occupy among foreign nations." He 
put at the service of this policy a mind both capacious and 
keen, which embraced the whole, yet saw details clearly, an 
untiring activity, and an iron will. 

First Operations of Richelieu ; Renewed War against the 
Protestants (1625-1626). — Richelieu had scarcely entered 
the council, when, cardinal though he was, he concluded the 
marriage of one of the sisters of Louis XIIL, Henrietta 
Maria, with the king of England, Charles I. ; he signed a 
new treaty of alliance with the ^Netherlands, secretly fur- 
nished money to Mansfeld in Germany, and sent ten thou- 
sand men to drive the soldiers of the Pope from the 
Valtellina, All these alliances were Protestant. Spain 
instigated the Huguenots to revolt. Rohan rallied those 
of LangTiedoc and the Cevennes, Soubise armed those of 
Rochelle. Rochelle was then a true republic, the centre and 
capital of Calvinism ; its navy was larger than that of the 
king of France. Richelieu was compelled to obtain ships 
from two Protestant states, England and the Netherlands. 
His admiral was fairly successful and Soubise took refuge in 
England. Richelieu then offered peace to the rebels, so that 
he might, at his leisure, prepare the means for their future 
destruction. 



LOUIS XIII. 393 

Humiliation of the Protestants (1627) ; Capture of Ro- 
cheUe (1628) ; Edict of Alais (1629). — Meanwhile he im- 
proved the condition of tlie finances, organized the army, 
constructed or bought vessels, and signed a treaty with 
Spain. When all was in readiness, he induced the king and 
nobles to undertake the siege of Eochelle. The enterprise 
seemed difficult ; for the king of England sent to the French 
Calvinists a fleet of ninety ships, commanded by the hand- 
some and incompetent Duke of Buckingham, and the gener- 
als and courtiers showed little eagerness to crush the revolt. 
But Richelieu provided for all emergencies ; he was at the 
same time general, engineer, and admiral. He drove the 
English from the Isle of R6, and in order to prevent their 
sending supplies to Eochelle, he cut off all entrance to the 
harbor, by an embankment eight hundred fathoms long. 
Two forts guarded its extremities and two hundred ships 
defended it. The English made vain attempts to storm this 
tremendous construction; Eochelle was isolated from the 
ocean. On the land side, a circumvallation surrounded the 
city. It resisted, however, sustaiaed by the superhuman 
courage of the Duchess of Eohan, and by the energy of its 
mayor, Guiton, who threatened to stab any one who should 
speak of surrendering. But after a siege of fifteen months, 
the town was forced to yield (1628). To effect this hacl 
cost the king forty millions ; but it was not too much to 
pay for the political unity of France. 

Eochelle was treated as a conquered city ; its municipal 
franchises were suppressed, its mayoralty abolished, its for- 
tifications torn down. Finally, the peace of Alais termi- 
nated the last religious war. The Calvinists ceased to be 
a political party and to form a state within a state ; but 
Eichelieu allowed them liberty of worship and the enjoy- 
ment of civil equality. During the whole of his ministry 
he employed them equally with other citizens, in the army, 
the magistracy, and the offices of finance. He protected 
them always in their rights and in their persons — a remark- 
able example of enlightened moderation in that intolerant 
age. One of the consequences of this war was the acquisi- 
tion of Acadia and Cape Breton from the English (1632). 

Humiliation of the Nobles ; Day of Dupes (1630) ; Execu- 
tion of Montmorency (1632) ; the Count of Soissons (1641) ; 
Cinq-Mars (1642). — Eichelieu desired that the king should 
be, in internal affairs, supreme magistrate of public order, 



394 LOUIS XIII. 

having, as lie said of himself on his death-bed, neither 
affection nor hatred for any one, but justice for all. The 
struggle with the nobility, which began in the first days of 
his ministry, continued till his death. Intrigues, conspira- 
cies, and revolts constantly imperilled his life, his author- 
ity, that of the king, and the peace of France. He repressed 
them with unsparing severity. 

The first conspirators were some young noblemen, coun- 
sellors of friends of Gaston of Orleans, the king's brother. 
It served Eichelieu's purpose to treat these follies as crimes ; 
but it is possible that he did not misjudge his adversaries 
when he attributed to them the intention of assassinating 
him, deposing Louis XIII., and putting in his place the 
Duke of Orleans, who should marry Anne of Austria. They 
were all executed or severely punished. Gaston, a prince 
of feeble character, sued for pardon from Richelieu (1626). 

The next year a terrible lesson was learned by those 
nobles who believed that laws were not made for them. 
The counts of Bouteville and Les Chapelles were executed 
for fighting a duel (1627). This time at least the encounter 
had been in good faith ; but it was not always so, and many 
pretended duels were only assassinations. It was estimated, 
in 1609, that in the previous eighteen years, four thousand 
gentlemen had perished in single combat, and as soon as 
Richelieu was dead, duelling was again engaged in to such 
an excess that nine hundred and forty gentlemen were 
killed between 1643 and 1654. 

In 1630 the queen-mother had her turn. Mary de' Medici 
had obtained for the cardinal a position in the council in 
order that he might serve as her instrument. When she 
saw that the minister thought only of the interests of the 
State, and did not yield either to her caprices or those of 
her second son Gaston, she extorted from the king a prom- 
ise to degrade him. Eichelieu left court. Already the 
members of the court were crowding the antechambers of 
the queen-mother. Saint-Simon, the father of the celebrated 
historian, remonstrated with the king and sent for Richelieu. 
The king then said to him, " Continue to serve me as you 
have done, and I will sustain you against all those who have 
sworn to destroy you." This day was known as the Day of 
Dupes (October, 1630). It, too, had its victims. 

The two brothers Marillac, one the keeper of the seals, 
the other, marshal of France, had been too hasty in triumph- 



LOUIS XIII. 395 

ing with the queen-mother : the first was deprived of his 
office and died in prison ; the other was accused of bribery, 
tried by an extraordinary commission in Richelieu's own 
house, and condemned to death and executed in 1632. Bas- 
sompierre, his friend, was shut up in the Bastile, where he 
remained until the death of the cardinal. Mary de' Medici 
herself was banished to Compi^gne, whence she fled to 
Brussels. 

The frivolous and incompetent Duke of Orleans had also 
quitted France and joined his mother in the Netherlands, 
where, with the Duke of Lorraine, he concocted another 
conspiracy which resulted in open revolt. The governor of 
Languedoc, Montmorency, was deluded by promises from 
Gaston. Joining forces, they gave battle to the royal army 
at Castelnaudary (September, 1632). The Duke of Orleans 
fled at the first attack ; the Duke of Montmorency, left alone, 
was taken, condemned by the Parliament of Toulouse, and 
executed in spite of the supplications of all the nobility. 
"Several," says Eichelieu, "murmured against this action 
and condemned it as harsh ; but others, more wise, praised 
the justice of the king, who preferred the good of his state 
to the empty reputation of injudicious clemency, and they 
appreciated the courage of the cardinal, who risked his own 
personal safety and the hatred of all the nobles in order to 
be faithful to his duty to his king." The Duke of Lorraine 
paid the expenses of the war ; for Louis XIII. (1634) occu- 
pied the duchy by military force, and it remained in the 
hands of the French until the end of the century. Gaston 
was spared, but was ordered to retire to Blois. In 1638 the 
heir apparent was born. 

The Count of Soissons made one more attempt to over- 
throw the terrible cardinal. Having taken refuge in Sedan 
with the Duke of Bouillon, he collected about him all the 
malcontents, in order to rekindle the civil war in France, 
but he was killed in battle. With him the war ended : the 
Duke of Bouillon hastened to make his submission. The 
last conspiracy was that of Cinq-Mars. A son of the Mar- 
quis of Effiat, he had been placed by Eichelieu near Louis 
XIII., to amuse, entertain, and watch over him. Having 
become a necessary favorite, he was raised to the position 
of grand equerry, and aspired to succeed to the position 
held by the constable De Luynes. He flattered himself that 
he might be able, with the support of the nobility, to over- 



396 LOUIS XIII. 

throw Eiclielieu. If the king was not an accomplice in this 
scheme, the queen at least was, and also Monsieur and the 
Duke of Bouillon. Cinq-Mars ruined himself by signing a 
treaty of alliance with the Spaniards. Kichelieu, then ill 
and almost dying, procured, by bribery, a copy of the treaty 
and sent it to Louis XIII. Cinq-Mars was condemned, and 
afterwards beheaded at Lyons (1642). With him perished 
De Thou, son of the historian. The Duke of Bouillon lost 
his principality, and Sedan was reunited to France forever. 

Submission of Parliament ; Assembly of Notables ; Strength- 
ening of the Royal Authority. — The magistracy never con- 
spired ; bvit sometimes it grumbled. Richelieu punished 
with imprisonment, removal from office, or exile, the faint- 
est evidence of opposition. Parliament was expressly 
forbidden to make any remonstrances against edicts con- 
cerning the government and administration of the state. 
Richelieu had, however, no scorn of public opinion. As 
is the case with all strong characters, he frequently ap- 
pealed to it, and gained by doing so. Accordingly many 
manifestos, explanations of his conduct, even what we call 
at the present day " articles," were written by him for the 
Mercure de France, the oldest of the French journals ; 
but he would have no States-General, and merely occa- 
sional assemblies of notables, which, chosen by the king, 
had less of the spirit of independence than the former, and 
might have quite as much intelligence. To them he ex- 
posed his various plans for creating a navy, for instituting 
a permanent army, for encouraging commerce and indus- 
try, and for the reformation of internal administration. 

In the year 1626 Richelieu ordered the demolition of the 
feudal fortresses, which were useless for the defence of the 
frontiers, and which were to royalty a continual menace, 
to the towns and surrounding country an object of terror, to 
the nobles a reminder of their former power and an encour- 
agement to revolt. The same year he abolished the offices 
of high admiral and constable, which bestowed u.pon their 
incumbents an almost royal authority over the navy and 
army. He established for Lorraine the Parliament of 
Metz. 

Institution of Intendants. — Finally, he made a complete 
revolution in the provincial administration by the institu- 
tion of intendants. Under the last Valois kings the gov- 
ernors, who were all of the higher nobility, had made them- 



LOUIS XIII. 397 

selves almost independent in their provinces ; and they 
regarded their oflS.ces as a patrimony which should descend 
to their children. Henry IV. had been obliged to purchase 
their obedience. Eichelieu, who in everything carried out 
the work of the first Bourbon, going even farther than he, 
instituted superior officers of justice, of police, and of 
finance, called by the modest name of intendants, who, 
chosen by the king from the non-noble classes, without 
personal influence, were at the disposal of the minister 
(1635) . These officers, docile agents of the central power, 
exercised a jealous control over the nobles, parliaments, 
cities, and provincial states ; little by little they concen- 
trated in their own hands all the civil power, and ended by 
leaving to the governors only the military authority, which 
indeed amounted to nothing in the interior provinces. Eoy- 
alty gained by this institution, and national unity was 
strengthened by it. Since the creation of a permanent 
army under Charles YII. no measure had struck a heavier 
blow at the new feudalism. 

Beginning of an Organization of the Navy (1641). — One of 
the consequences of the siege of Eochelle was a first attempt 
to organize a navy. In 1629 Richelieu employed D'lnfre- 
ville to choose the situations for three arsenals. He decided 
upon Havre, Brest, and Brouage. Magazines were imme- 
diately built there. Numerous vessels were armed, and in 
the Thirty Years' War the fleets of France controlled the 
ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. 

Eichelieu did not forget the infant colonies of France. 
In Canada, Champlain had founded Quebec in 1608, and 
France had a few ports in Acadia, the island of Cape Breton, 
and Florida. These possessions were called New France. 
In 1627 the cardinal caused the formation of a company 
which should have the perpetual monopoly of the fur trade, 
the nomination of its own officers, and the jurisdiction over 
all its employees. Such a monopoly was then necessary. 
He organized, after the example of the English and Dutch, 
the company of the American Isles (1635), Avhich flourished 
as long as he could watch over it ; he supported the East 
India company, which had a station at Madagascar, and 
the African company. 

Disorder of the Finances. — With regard to finances, Eiche- 
lieu returned to the unfortunate methods which Sully had 
discarded. He increased the taxation, which was inevitable 



398 LOUIS XIII. 

in consideration of the great schemes he undertook, but he 
managed them badly. The difference between the net and 
gross income became enormous, as did also the annual deficit. 
The treasury was in great straits, and the people everywhere 
were terribly oppressed. Disturbances broke out in Paris 
and in the provinces ; but the troops harshly repressed these 
revolts, and the peo^jle were only too well accustomed to 
financial disorder and great poverty in the country districts. 

Commerce and Industry. — The great minister proposed 
to neglect nothing that could increase the power and wealth 
of France. By his system of great commercial companies 
he desired to contend with the seamen of England and the 
Netherlands for the markets of the world. A noble had hith- 
erto forfeited his title by sailing in command of a merchant 
ship. Richelieu declared that commerce should no longer 
be derogatory to the nobility, and from that time the ships 
of the companies were commanded by adventurous gentlemen. 
At home Richelieu encouraged the growing manufactures of 
glass and carpets, and imported engineers from the Nether- 
lands to drain the marshes, thus carrying out the work of 
Henry IV. and paving the way for Colbert. 

Foreign Policy. — Since the treaty of Vervins, France had 
taken part in no great war ; and as but few of the people 
and none of the nobility were engaged in either manufactures 
or commerce, the rising generation felt an impatience of 
repose and a need for action. Richelieu proceeded to show 
them an aim worthy of their great courage. 

The Spaniards, masters of the Southern Netherlands, 
Franche-Comt6, and Roussillon, surrounded France on three 
sides, and held Italy by means of Naples and Milan. He 
began with them, and renewed the old treaties with Venice, 
Savoy, and the Netherlands. 

War of the Valtellina (1624). — He followed up his trea- 
ties by actions, and drove the Spaniards from the Valtellina, 
a valley which secured communication between the Spanish 
Milanese and the Austrian Tyrol. The inhabitants, Catholic 
subjects of the Protestant republic of the Grisons, had 
revolted at the instigation of Spain. The Grisons had pro- 
tested; the Pope, being chosen as mediator, was on the 
point of deciding in favor of the Spaniards, when Richelieu 
took the control of affairs. He at once sent an army of ten 
thousand men, and restored the Valtellina to the Grisons 
(1624). The court of Madrid yielded (1626). 



LOUIS XIII. 399 

War of the Mantuan Succession (1629). — Some years later 
the cardinal lutervened beyond the Alps in favor of a French 
prince, Charles de Gronzaga, Duke of Nevers, who was the 
heir of Mantua and Montferrat. The Spaniards set up the 
Duke of Guastalla as claimant against him in Mantua, and 
the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus, in Montferrat, where 
they besieged Casale, the capital. Richelieu himself marched 
to the Alps with an army of thirty-six thousand men, and 
Louis XIII. forced the pass of Susa (1629). The Duke of 
Savoy signed the treaty of Susa ; the Spaniards raised the 
siege of Casale and returned to the Milanese. Scarcely a 
year had passed before the victorious Imperialists in Ger- 
many had again entered the territory of the Grisons, the 
Spaniards were in Montferrat, and the Duke of Savoy was 
negotiating in every direction. Richelieu again crossed the 
Alps with forty thousand men ; Savoy was conquered, 
Piedmont traversed, Pinerolo taken (1630). The peace of 
Cherasco, in which Mazarin was the negotiator, strengthened 
the French influence in Italy. The Duke of Mantua was 
re-established in his estates, and Victor Amadeus granted to 
Louis XIIL, with Pinerolo, the free passage of the Alps 
(1631). Thus, in 1631, Richelieu had separated in Italy 
the domains of the two branches of the house of Austria 
which were making an effort to reunite, and opened the 
peninsula to France. 

The Thirty Years' War ; Gustavus Adolphus in Germany. — 
The Thirty Tears' War, a struggle at once political and re- 
ligious, had commenced in Bohemia (1618), and had spread 
gradually throughout the empire. The elector palatine, 
the king of Denmark, had, one after the other, been con- 
quered and humbled. The imperial army, created and 
commanded by Wallenstein, had penetrated to the Baltic, 
trampling under foot Germany and her liberties. The ques- 
tion of its partition among independent princes, or of its 
consolidation under the despotism of the house of Austria, 
seemed about to be decided in favor of the latter. Richelieu, 
cardinal though he was, espoused the cause of the German 
princes, regardless of their religion. His emissary, P^re 
Joseph, gained such an influence over the electors at the 
diet of Ratisbon in 1630, that they extorted from the 
emperor the dismissal of Wallenstein and the disbanding of 
his army ; and then refused to give the emperor's son the 
title of King of the Romans. Gustavus Adolphus, king of 



400 LOUIS XIII. 

Sweden, had already made himself famous for remarkable 
military successes. Richelieu brought about a truce be- 
tween the young king and the Poles, then granted him an 
annual subsidy of 1,200,000 francs, and urged him on against 
Germany. G-ustavus Adolphus entered Germany like a 
thunderbolt of war, defeated Tilly near Leipzig, killed him 
at the passage of the Lech, and died himself at Liitzen, in 
the arms of victory. Eichelieu, now relieved of his weight- 
iest cares at home, boldly substituted France, full of youth 
and enthusiasm, in Sweden's place in the struggle against 
the house of Austria. 

First Part of the French Period (1635-1643).— Against 
Austria and Spain thus closely united he formed a solid 
group of alliances. He promised twelve thousand men to 
the German confederates, bought Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, 
the best pupil of Gustavus Adolphus, and his army, made 
a treaty of alliance with the chancellor of Sweden, Oxen- 
stjerna, with the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, with the Dutch, 
with the Swiss, and the dukes of Mantua, Parma, and Savoy. 
He even tried to win over the king of England. 

These numerous treaties announced the proportions which 
the war wovild assume. Richelieu carried it to all the French 
frontiers ; to the southern Low-Countries, that he might 
divide them with Holland ; to the Rhine, in order to cover 
Champagne and Lorraine, and take possession of Alsace ; 
into Germany, that he might join hands with Sweden and 
break down the power of Austria ; into Italy, in order to 
maintain the authority of the Grisons in the Valtellina and 
the influence of France in Piedmont ; towards the Pyrenees, 
to conquer Roussillon ; to the ocean and the Mediterranean, 
to destroy the Spanish fleets, to sustain the revolts of Port- 
ugal and Catalonia, and to menace the shores of Italy. He 
forced the nation to make prodigious efforts for seven years. 

Victories of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Harcourt, Guebri- 
and, and Lourdes. — The war began successfully in the 
Netherlands (1635) . But the Dutch were startled at seeing 
the French so near them, and poorly seconded their opera- 
tions. The Spaniards penetrated into Picardy, crossed the 
Somme, and seized upon Corbie (1636). For a moment 
Paris trembled ; but the great city soon took courage again. 
Louis XIII. at the head of forty thousand men hastened 
to drive the Spaniards beyond the frontiers and recapture 
Corbie, where the cardinal escaped the greatest danger that 



LOUIS XIII. 401 

had ever threatened his life, for just at the moment when 
the king's brother was to give the signal for his assassina- 
tion, his courage failed (1636). Another invasion, at- 
tempted in Burgundy, was also repulsed. 

The following year (1637) Cardinal de la Valette took the 
cities of the upper Sambre, — Cateau-Cambr^sis, Landrecies, 
and Maubeuge. Richelieu loved to entrust commands to 
priests, since they were trained to obedience. His chief ad- 
miral was Lourdis, archbishop of Bordeaux, who destroyed 
a Spanish fleet in 1638, and ravaged, more than once, the 
kingdoms of Naples and Spain. But in this year (1638) 
the greatest successes were on the Rhine : Bernhard of 
Saxe-Weimar gained a victory over the Imperialists at 
Rheinfeld, captured their general, Johann von Werth, and 
carried Alt-Breisach by assault after three victories (1639). 
When Bernhard died (1639), France fell heir to his con- 
quests and his army. Artois, which belonged to the 
Spaniards, was invaded during the next campaign. Three 
marshals besieged Arras. The Spaniards were beaten and 
the city was captured (1640). A second province was thus 
taken away from the house of Austria. France was fighting 
at the same time in the North of Italy. After the death of 
Victor Amadeus (1640) his brothers had disputed the 
regency with his widow, the daughter of Henry IV., and 
had obtained the support of a Spanish army. Richelieu sent 
into Piedmont the Count of Harcourt, who gained there 
three brilliant victories, re-established the authority of the 
regent, and by a wise treaty caused the princes of Savoy to 
enter the French alliance (1640-1642). 

Spain made no further attacks ; she had enough to do to 
defend herself against revolts of the Catalans and the Portu- 
guese (1640). The cardinal lent assistance to the new king 
of Portugal, John of Braganza, and to the Catalans. A 
French army, which the king personally conducted, perma- 
nently added Roussillon to France (1641). Spain being occu- 
pied at home, it was easier to conquer Austria in G-ermany. 
The defeat of Nordlingen and the defection of the elector 
of Saxony, in 1635, had forced the Swedes to fall back into 
Pomerania. But in 1636 Ban^r resumed the offensive and 
overcame the Imperialists at Wittstock ; he defeated them 
again at Chemnitz (1639), forced his way into Bohemia, and, 
aided by the Count of Guebriant, one of the most skilful 
tacticians of the age, nearly succeeded in capturing at 



402 LOUIS XIIL 

Eatisbon, in 1641, the diet of the Empire and the emperor 
himself. While the successor of Baner, the paralytic Tor- 
stenson, was astonishing Europe by the rapidity of his oper- 
ations and a succession of glorious victories in Silesia and 
Saxony (1641), Guebriant boldly advanced with the Duke of 
Weimar's army into the western part of the Empire, and was 
victorious at Wolfenbiittel (1641) and at Kempen (1642). 

Death of Richelieu (December, 1642). — It was in the midst 
of all these victories that Richelieu died, at the age of fifty- 
seven. When they presented the Host to him, he said, " Be- 
hold the Judge before whom I shall soon appear ; I pray Him 
to condemn me if I have had any other desire than the good 
of religion and the State." " Do you forgive your enemies ? " 
said the confessor. "I have never had any others but 
those of the State," he replied. He left France victorious 
everywhere ; the house of Austria conquered ; four provinces, 
Lorraine, Alsace, Artois, and Roussillon, added to the king- 
dom ; Catalonia and Portugal in revolt against Spain ; the 
Swedish and French soldiers almost at the gates of Vienna. 
He had indeed fulfilled the promise made to Louis XIII. 
upon entering on his ministry; he had raised the king's 
name to the position it ought to hold among foreign nations ; 
at home he had made everything su.bmit to his authority. 
But the nation passed from one danger to another; from 
aristocratic license to arbitrary royal despotism which some- 
times set justice aside, and disposed at will of the fortunes, 
liberty, and lives of its citizens. 

Richelieu was not in reality a systematic enemy of the 
nobility. He thought it a necessity, and had a horror of 
the mixture of classes. He was indignant at the position 
which the bourgeoisie already occupied in the State, on 
account of the offices it held. Merchants and soldiers were 
all he asked the Third Estate to furnish. We reproached 
him a moment ago for having badly managed the finances. 
But he regarded taxation from a double point of view, — as 
furnishing resources to the State, and also as a means of 
keeping the people in submission. "All politicians," said 
he, " agree that if the people are too much at their ease, it 
will be impossible to make them conform with the rules of 
duty. If they are free from taxation, they will dream of 
being free from obedience." 

The French Academy; the Sorbonne; the Palais-Royal; the 
Jardin des Plantes. — The terrible minister had a taste for 



LOUIS XIII. 403 

letters and the arts. He instituted the French Academy 
in 1635, designing it to control the language and regulate 
literary taste ; he reconstructed the Sorbomie ; he built the 
college of Plessis, the Palais-Cardinal (Palais-Eoyal), and 
founded the royal printing-house ; he established the Jardin 
des Plantes for the instruction of medical students. He 
treated authors with a deference to which they had not been 
accustomed, pensioned learned men and poets, Corneille 
among others, and encouraged painters. He was himself a 
remarkable writer. 

Death of Louis XIII. — Louis XIII. made no alteration in 
the , policy of the cardinal, and called to the council Jules 
Mazarin (Giulio Mazarini) ; the friend and confidant of the 
great minister. The king survived E-ichelieu only six 
months (died May 14, 1643). 

This prince does not deserve the contempt that is often 
expressed for him. He retained for eighteen years a min- 
ister for whom he had little liking ; he made him less his 
counsellor than the depository of his omnipotence and the 
dictator of France. This willingness to accept a minister 
whose demands were often painful and sometimes cruel, 
should be placed to the credit of the prince who possessed 
such rare devotion to public interest. Besides, Louis XIII. 
had courage, and sometimes decision of character, and he 
exhibited on the throne a virtue which is rarely seen there, 
the chastity of Saint Louis. 



404 MINORITY OF LOUIS XIV. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 

MINORITY OF LOUIS XIV. AND ADMINISTRATION OF 
MAZARIN. 

(1643-1661 A.D.) 

Regency of Anne of Austria. — The eldest son of Louis 
XIII. was not yet five years old. His father, who distrusted 
the queen, had left tne regency to her only on condition of 
having a council which should decide all questions by plu- 
rality of votes. Anne of Austria did not propose to accept 
tutors after having had masters so long ; she flattered the 
Parliament; "she would be always very glad," she said, 
" to make use of the counsels of so august a body " ; at the 
same time she demanded that they should annul the last 
wishes of her husband. Parliament, delighted to be able to 
return to political life by means of this tempting ^Dpportunity, 
at once set aside the will of the king. Anne of Austria was 
proclaimed regent " with power to choose such persons as she 
might approve, to deliberate on the affairs which should be 
presented to her." To the astonishment of the court, her 
first choice was Cardinal Mazarin, the friend and successor 
of Richelieu. 

Mazarin. — Mazarin was born in 1602, and belonged to an 
old Sicilian family which had settled in Rome. Being sent 
as nuncio to France (1634), he had attracted the notice of 
Richelieu, who attached him to himself and obtained for him 
the cardinal's hat (1641). The queen reposed implicit con- 
fidence in him. " He had a strong, foreseeing, inventive 
mind, plain good sense, a character more supple than weak, 
and less strong than persevering. He was guided not by 
likes or dislikes, but by his calculations. Ambition had 
raised him above vanity. He had a rare insight into the 
characters of men, but he allowed his own judgment to be 
influenced by the estimation which life had already won for 
them. Before granting his confidence to any one he de- 
manded that he should have shown the wit which plans 
good fortune, and the strength of character which masters 



ADMINISTRATION OF MAZAKIN. 405 

it. He was incapable of despondency, and was remark- 
ably constant in spite of his apparent cliangeableness " 
(Mignet). 

Cabal of the Importants. — Meanwhile all those who had 
suffered with the queen had come together and, believing 
themselves already masters of the State, affected airs of 
superiority which caused the name Importants to be given 
to their party. Prominent among them were the Duke 
of Venddme, legitimized son of Henry IV. and Gabrielle 
d'Estr^es; his two sons, the dukes of Mercoeur and Beaufort, 
and the young and brilliant Duke of La Rochefoucauld. The 
question now was how to undo the work of Richelieu ; the 
Importants made no attempt to conceal this ; they declared 
openly that it was necessary to restore to the nobles all that 
Louis XIII. had taken from them : but the queen had be- 
come avaricious of power since she had had it in her own 
hands. If she had not desired to share it with wise coun- 
sellors, still less was she willing to give it into the hands of 
blunderers who had begun plotting again and would soon 
stir up a civil war. The discovery of an attempt to assas- 
sinate Mazarin decided her to banish them all from the 
court. The Importants had ruled but three months. 

Thirty Years' War continued; Victories of Conde and 
Turenne. — The death of Richelieu had emboldened the 
Spaniards ; they resumed the offensive, and besieged Rocroi, 
hoping to reach Paris without other obstacle, for they 
had before them only an army inferior in numbers and a 
general twenty-one years old, Louis of Bourbon, then Duke 
of Enghien, afterwards the great Cond^. The armies met 
May 19th, 1643. Cond6, at the head of his right wing, 
routed the cavalry which was placed opposite him, passed 
boldly behind the Spanish line, so as to surprise the victo- 
rious right of the enemy, and routed them. He turned then 
upon the Spanish infantry, surrounded them, attacked them 
three times, and broke their line. 

The Duke of Enghien followed up this victory with im- 
petuosity and daring. Each year was marked by a victory. 
The Spaniards being driven out of Erance, he turned against 
Austria and her German allies. The army first led by 
Bernhard of Weimar had just lost its skilful general, 
Guebriant, and, ill following several generals at once, had 
been surprised by the Imperialists at Tuttlingen, in can- 
tonments too widely separated. Turenne, being appointed 



406 MINORITY OF LOUIS XIV. 

marshal, gathered together the shattered force and reor- 
ganized it. Cond6 joined him with ten thousand. They 
attacked the Bavarian general, Mercy, under the walls of 
Freiburg-im-Breisgau. This was rather a frightful massacre 
than a victory ; but it permitted the two generals to seize 
Philippsburg, Worms, and Mainz, and thus to clear the 
enemy from the banks of the Rhine. 

While Cond6 was returning to Paris, Turenne was de- 
feated at Marienthal by Mercy (1645). The Duke of 
Enghien hastened up with re-enforcements, drove back the 
enemy, penetrated into Bavaria, and put to rout the entire 
imperial army in the bloody battle of Nordlingen, where 
Mercy was killed (1645). In 1646 he besieged Dunkirk, 
and was the first to win that place for France. The follow- 
ing year he went to Catalonia and besieged L^rida, but was 
repulsed (1647) . This was his first defeat ; he repaired his 
fortunes in another field. In the north the archduke Leopold, 
the brother of the emperor, had advanced as far as Sens, in 
Artois; Cond6 attacked them with his usual vigor, and in 
two hours the battle was won (1648). Turenne, in Ger- 
many, in conjunction with the Swedes, won the battles of 
Lauingen and Zusmarshausen (1648) ; drove the aged elector 
of Bavaria from his states, and but for a tremendoxis rain 
which suddenly swelled the waters of the Inn, would have 
marched on Vienna. 

Treaties of Westphalia (1648). — Negotiations had for 
some time been going on. Proposed in 1641, the conference- 
began in 1643, at two cities of Westphalia, Miinster and 
Osnabriick. The problem to be solved was, to rearrange, 
the map of Europe after a war which had lasted thirty 
years, to give a new constitution to the Empire, and to 
regulate the public and religious rights of several Christian 
nations. At the last moment Spain withdrew. The other 
states signed the peace, October, 1648. 

In the Thirty Years' War Austria had endeavored to 
crush out the religious and political liberties of Germany ; 
Austria being conquered, the Protestants received full lib- 
erty of conscience, and the imperial authority, but lately so 
threatening, was annulled ; the princes and the German 
states were confirmed in the entire and complete exercise 
of sovereignty within their own states, including the right 
to make foreign alliances. Sweden received the island of 
Riigen, Wismar, Hither Pomerania with Stettin, the arch- 



ADMINISTRATION OF MAZARIN. 407 

bishopric of Bremen, and the bishopric of Verclen, that is to 
say, the months of the three great German rivers, the Oder, 
the Elbe, and the Weser, with five millions of crowns, and 
three votes in the diet. 

France continued to occupy Lorraine. She obtained from 
the Empire a renunciation of all rights to the three bishop- 
rics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which she had been holding 
for a century ; to the city of Pinerolo, to Alsace with the 
exception of Strassburg, thus carrying her frontier to the 
Ehine. She also received Alt-Breisach on the right bank, 
and the right to garrison Philippsburg. These were great 
advantages, for Alsace covered Lorraine and Eranche-Comt^, 
so that their restoration to Erance would be only a question 
of time. By causing the right of the German states to con- 
tract alliances with foreign powers to be. recognized, Erance 
secured for herself a permanent opportunity to buy up these 
indigent princes, while by guaranteeing the execution of the 
treaty she secured the right to interfere on all occasions in 
the affairs of Germany. The Empire was henceforth only 
a sort of confederation of three hundred and sixty states, 
Lutheran and Catholic, monarchical and republican, lay and 
ecclesiastical. The treaties of Westphalia put an end to 
the supremacy of the house of Austria. But the Bourbons 
inherited the ambition of the Hapsburgs, and roused against 
themselves similar coalitions. 

Internal Government from 1643 to 1661. — While Mazarin 
was thus gloriously carrying out the policy of Richelieu, his 
power in Erance was shaken by factions. The last reign 
had bequeathed great financial embarrassments to Cardinal 
Mazarin, who increased them by his bad management ; he 
needed a great deal of money to carry on the foreign war, to 
bribe the nobles by pensioning them, and also to ^satisfy his 
own scandalous avarice. The superintendent, Emeri, was 
also an Italian, and unpopular, as were all ministers of 
finance in those times. He resorted to burdensome and 
vexatious expedients : he borrowed money at twenty-five 
per cent ; he created offices which he sold, reduced the pay- 
ments to the state annuitants, kept back a portion of the 
salaries of public officers, revived obsolete ordinances in 
order to enforce heavier fines, and insisted upon extreme 
rigor in the collection of taxes. The end was universal 
bankruptcy. The Eronde was evolved from this financial 
crisis and extreme distress. 



408 MINORITY OF LOUIS XIV. 

Opposition of Parliament to the Royal Authority. — By 

the establishment of the j^ctulette, judicial offices had become 
a hereditary property, perfectly safe, and attended with high 
and deserved esteem. The magistrates had acquired by this 
security and consideration a spirit of proud independence 
which made Parliament a centre of opposition, where, if 
necessary, national traditions and monarchical principles 
were earnestly defended. The financial exactions of the 
superintendent gave it an excellent pretext for speaking out 
while appearing to speak in the interest of the people. ISTew 
edicts led to the beginning of a revolt. Beside themselves 
with the popularity they had won by their persistent oppo- 
sition to the ministry, the magistrates imagined themselves 
to occupy the positior of the States-General, and emulated 
the Parliament of England, which at that time was conduct- 
ing a revolution; and in May, 1648, the members of the 
four sovereign courts, the Parliament, the chamber of ac- 
counts, the C0U7' cles aides, and the great council, came to- 
gether in the hall of St. Loviis in the palace of justice, " to 
serve the interest of the public and of individuals, and to 
reform the abuses of the State." 

The prime minister decided at first to annul the decree 
of their union; then, changing his mind, — for the situation 
appeared dangerous, — he authorized the deliberations of 
the joint assembly, which undertook to give a new con- 
stitution to Prance. The assembly actually offered twenty- 
seven articles for the royal sanction, so as to make them the 
fundamental law of the monarchy. Some of their demands 
were excellent, others less useful, and most of them imprac- 
ticable. The most important provided that in the future 
the taxes could not be legally collected unless they had been 
discussed and registered, " with liberty of suffrage," by the 
Parliament of Paris. This was giving a part of the legisla- 
tive authority to an aristocracy of two hundred magistrates 
who bought their offices. Another of their reforms would 
have been a direct attack upon the administrative centrali- 
zation instituted by Pichelieu, by abolishing the office of the 
intendants of provinces. The " companies " were better 
inspired when they demanded substantial securities for 
the liberty of the subject, the suppression of lettres de cachet, 
of extraordinary tribunals, and the institution of something 
resembling liabeas corpus. 

Day of Barricades (Aug. 26, 1648) ; Mathieu Mole; the 



ADMINISTRATION OF MAZARIN. 409 

Coadjutor De Retz. — At this time, encouraged by the vic- 
tory of Sens, the cardinal resolved to seize three of the most 
obstinate magistrates, — Blancm^nil, Charton, and Broussel. 
He mistakenly believed that he should make a great im- 
pression upon the people by causing them to be arrested at 
midday, just as the Te Deum was being sung in Notre-Dame 
for the victory of Sens, and the Swiss guards were bringing 
into the church sixty-three flags taken from the enemy. 
Charton escax)ed, Blancm^nil was taken without any diffi- 
culty, but an old servant of Broussel aroused the people ; 
the shops were closed, the heavy iron chains which were at 
the entrance to the principal streets were stretched across, 
and four hundred thousand voices cried at once, " Liberty and 
Broussel ! " (Aug. 26, 1648) . Two hundred barricades were 
thrown up in a moment ; they were extended wp to within 
a hundred paces of the Palais-Eoyal. 

Next day the Parliament in a body went on foot over the 
barricades, which they were permitted to pass, to demand 
of the queen their imprisoned members, but could not obtain 
them. On their return they were stopped by the infu- 
riated populace. The intrepid first president, Mathieu 
MoM, calmed the crowd by the dignity of his demeanor 
and returned once more to the palace. The disturbance 
increased. The magistrates attempted to make another 
application to Anne of Austria ; and Queen Henrietta Maria 
of England persuaded her at last to grant it. Quiet was at 
once restored. In October the edict of St. Germain sanc- 
tioned all the demands of the " chamber of St. Louis." 

The coadjutor of Paris, Paul de Gondi, who had taken a 
prominent part in the victorious insurrection, was descended 
from a Florentine family. When young he had formed a 
plot against Eichelieu, and had made a special study of con- 
spiracies. It was with such a turn of mind that he entered 
the Church. In 1643 he was appointed coadjutor of his 
uncle, the archbishop of Paris ; but he aspired to a much 
higher position. He aimed to play the part of Richelieu, 
and made use of his office only to gain popularity in Paris. 
He believed he had in him the elements of a great man ; 
time proved him to be only a blunderer. 

War of the Fronde ; Parliament and the Nobles (January- 
April, 1649) . — The prime minister had yielded only to gain 
time ; he resolved to settle with these factions when he 
had got rid of the foreign war. In February, 1649, Anne of 



410 MINORITY OF LOUIS XIV. 

Austria left Paris with her children and assembled some 
troops about her. Parliament, unable to struggle alone 
against the court, demanded or accepted the services of 
some princes and young lords, who could afford to amuse 
themselves with civil war. These were the prince of Conti, 
brother of the great Cond4, the Duke of Longueville, who 
had married their sister, the Duke of Bouillon, the Duke of 
La Eochefoucauld, and even the wise Turenne.^ The coadjutor 
was the ruling spirit of the plot ; as figure-head he used a 
grandson of Henry IV., the Duke of Beaufort, a prince pos- 
sessing little wit, but much courage. Gondi also endeav- 
ored to enlist Conde, but he proudly refused. The struggle 
which then began deserves the name which history has 
bestowed upon it, that of a child's plaything, the Fronde 
(sling). 

" The queen, with tears in her eyes, implored the prince 
of Cond6 to act as protector to the king, and the victor of 
Eocroi, Freiburg, Nordlingen, and Sens could not turn his 
back upon so many past services. Parliament, nevertheless, 
dared to sustain the war. Each member taxed himself in 
order to raise troops. The great chamber, the chamber of 
inquests, the chamber of requests, the chamber of accounts, 
the cour des aides, which had so often cried out against slight 
and necessary taxation, raised a sum of almost ten millions 
for the ruin of the country. Twelve thousand men were 
levied by decree of Parliament. Every owner of a jporte- 
cocMre had to furnish a man and a horse ; the cavalry was 
called the cavalry of the porte-cocMres. . . . ISTo one knew 
why he was in arms. . . . Everything was turned into 
jest. . . . Parisian troops who went out from Paris, and 
always returned whipped, were received with hisses and 
shouts of laughter. All their small losses were repaired by 
couplets and epigrams. The public-houses were the tents 
where they held councils of war in the midst of jests, songs, 
and the most dissolute merry-making" (Voltaire). 

It is not necessary, however, to represent the Eronde as 
more insignificant than it really was. It was well known 
why the people took up arms. A universal bankruptcy had 
lately crushed all hearts and fortunes ; they wished to arise 
from this fallen condition. In order to accomplish a revo- 
lution, it is not only necessary that there should be reasons 
for change ; there should also be men capable of making the 
change ; and in 1648 no one took any interest in the public 



ADMINISTRATION OF MAZARIN. 411 

welfare. The princes regretted their places in the council ; 
the nobles their lost power ; the Parliament wished to play 
the same game which was being played by the Parliament 
of England on the other side of the Channel, and the people, 
who saw in all this only a means for a decrease of taxation, 
followed in the wake of the princes, the -magistrates, and 
their archbishop. The latter expected that the reaction 
against the system of Richelieu would surely bear him into 
power. Men were not going at haphazard; therefore the 
ridiculousness of the Fronde does not consist in the vanity 
of its proposals, but in the disorder of its antagonistic 
ambitions, and also in the impossibility of its success. 

The magistrates were the first to desire to withdraw 
from the squabble. The "gentlemen of the robe" had 
more love for the coimtry than the soldiers. The news of 
a treaty with Spain signed by the nobles, brought Parlia- 
ment to a decision; the first president was appointed to 
treat with Mazarin. The convention of Eueil lowered some 
of the taxes, authorized the assemblies of the chambers, and 
brought the court back to Paris (April, 1649). 

The Petits-Maitres, or Young Fronde; Arrest of Conde 
(January, 1650). — The peace, though dearly bought, was 
of short duration. Conde desired to rule the government 
which he had protected. He wearied the regent and the 
prime minister by his continual demands, and humiliated 
them by his insolence. Meantime he caused the old Fron- 
deurs to become discontented; he spoke constantly with 
scorn of those bourgeois who presumed to govern the state ; 
he surrounded himself with vain and presumptuous young 
lords, who reproduced in an extreme degree the defects of 
their chief and were called in consequence the petit maitres 
(little masters). Mazarin had little difficulty in uniting 
all the people against him; and had him arrested in the 
Louvre, with his brother Conti and his brother-in-law Lon- 
gueville (January, 1650). The populace rejoiced; the old 
democratic leaven of the great city began to ferment. " Let 
us recognize the fact," said a pamphlet of the time, " that 
the great are great only because we carry them on our 
shoulders." 

Union of the Two Frondes; Exile of Mazarin (January, 
1651). — Insurrections broke out in some of the provinces, 
but were quickly repressed. But Mazarin had promised the 
cardinal's hat to the coadjutor, in order to attach him to the 



412 MINORITY OF LOUIS XIV. 

interests of the queen ; after tlie affair was over he forgot 
his promise. The coadjutor entered into alliance with 
the party of Conde, revived the dissatisfactions of Parlia- 
ment, and stirred up the people ; and the two Frondes, for 
the time united under his influence, obliged Anne of Austria 
to deliver up the princes and to send her prime minister out 
of the kingdom. Mazarin retired to Cologne, and in his 
exile continued to govern the queen of France (Februar}', 
1651). De Retz had finally obtained the hat ; but the union 
of the two Frondes was of short duration. 

Revolt of Conde; Battle of Bleneau (April, 1652). — 
Conde was dissatisfied with everything ; with the Par- 
liament, with Paris, and with the court. He had fancied 
that the queen would grant him the entire control of affairs 
as a compensation for his thirteen months of captivity, and 
yet Mazarin was governing from his place of exile. Irritated 
by the isolation to which he was abandoned, he undertook 
more criminal designs. He set out for the south, resolved 
to acquire supreme power by force of arms. While he was 
urging Guienne to insurrection and treating with Spain, 
his friends were preparing for war in the heart of France. 
Mazarin at once returned to France (December, 1651), and 
gave the command of the troops to the viscount of Turenne, 
reattached to the royal cause. The marshal advanced to 
the Loire. Conde most unexpectedly appeared and attacked 
him ; but Turenne, with only four thousand men against 
twelve thousand, prevented the enemy from following up 
their advantage. 

Battle of the Faubourg Saint Antoine (July, 1652). — 
Which side would Paris take ? - The armies advanced to 
demand an answer from the Parisians themselves ; they 
refused to allow either of the parties then facing each other 
in the Faubourg Saint Antoine to enter Paris. The battle 
was bloody and for a long time undecided. The Duke of 
Orleans, the cardinal De Retz, the Parliament, the queen, 
were awaiting the result. Cond6 fought like a soldier. But 
the army of the Fronde, threatened on its flanks, was about 
to be surrounded and destroyed, when Mademoiselle, the 
daughter of Gaston of Orleans, caused the gates to be opened 
to Cond6, and turned the cannon of the Bastile upon the 
royal troops. Turemie withdrew in astonishment. Conde 
soon left the city and retired to the Spaniards in Flanders. 
A large number of nobles followed him thither, taking with 
them almost an army. 



ABMINItiTRATION OF MAZAEIN. 413 

Return of Mazarin (February, 1653). — This emigration 
was fatal to those that took part in it. It accelerated the 
movement of public opinion, which had turned in the 
direction of the king ; Mazarin, in order to present no ob- 
stacle to it, withdrew a second time. Then the Parliament 
and the citizens implored the queen-mother to return to the 
now peaceful capital. Ten magistrates were deprived of 
their offices or imprisoned; the cardinal De E-etz was 
shut up in Vincennes, the prince of Conde condemned to 
death in default of appearance, and Gaston exiled to Blois. 
Three months after, Mazarin returned in full power (Feb- 
ruary, 1653). This was the end of the Fronde. But 
these events left an ineffaceable impression on the mind 
of Louis XIV. The remembrance of them contributed 
to develop in him the most absolute ideas of govern- 
ment. Upon returning to Paris, he authorized the regis- 
tration (October, 1652) of a declaration "very expressly 
forbidding the members of Parliament thenceforth to take 
any part in the general affairs of State, and in the direction 
of finances." Two more very heavy blows were dealt 
against Parliament : a statute providing that the decrees 
of the council of State should be obligatory upon the " sov- 
ereign courts,'' and the re-establishment (1655) of intend- 
ants in the provinces. And thus the revolution attempted 
by the parliamentary aristocracy miscarried. 

Victories of Turenne at Arras and at the Dunes ; Alliance 
of France with Cromwell. — The war of the Fronde was ended. 
It remained to finish the war with Spain, which during these 
disturbances had recaptured Dunkirk, and Casale in Italy. 
Cond6 put at the service of the same enemy the sword 
which had once been so fatal to them ; but he seemed to 
have lost his strength on leaving France. He went first 
with the Archduke Leopold to besiege Arras. Turenne 
attacked them in their camp and forced their lines. Cond6 
could do nothing but retreat in good order. 

The years 1655 and 1656 were occupied in besieging 
places on the frontier, and in skilful manoeuvres on the 
part of Turenne and Conde ; but with the small army they 
had under their control they could strike no decisive blows. 
Mazarin had no more royalist scruples than Richelieu had 
had of religious scruples. His predecessor had formed an 
alliance with the Protestants against Austria; he formed 
an alliance with Cromwell (1657) against Spain. Hence- 



414 MINORITY OF LOUIS XIV. 

forth Spain experienced only reverses. While the English 
were seizing upon Jamaica, and burning the galleys of 
Cadiz, Dunkirk, the key of Flanders, was besieged by land 
and sea. The Spaniards advanced along the dunes which 
bordered the sea, in order to assist them. Turenne gained a 
complete victory over them (June, 1658) : Dunkirk, which 
he acquired by it, was restored to the English. 

Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) ; League of the Rhine (1658). 
— The cabinet of Madrid had no more armies ; it asked for 
peace. Negotiations were conducted by the two ministers, 
Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro, who met on an island in 
the Bidassoa, at the frontier of the two countries. The 
result was the treaty of the Pyrenees (1659). France re- 
tained Artois, Cerdaiia, Eoussillon, and Lorraine ; the prince 
of Cond^ was re-established in his principal offices ; and 
finally Louis XIV. married the infanta Maria Theresa, who 
was to bring him a dowry of three hundred thousand gold 
crowns, in consideration of which the princess renounced all 
pretension to the throne of her father. Mazarin arranged 
it so that the renunciation should be legally null ; he ex- 
pressly made it dependent upon the exact payment of the 
dowry, which he knew the Spaniards would never be able 
to pay. Thus he paved the way for the future claims of the 
house of Bourbon. By this same treaty Mazarin abandoned 
Portugal, which, having no longer the support of France, 
sought that of England. In 1658 Mazarin concluded the 
league of the Rhine, by which the three ecclesiastical 
electors, the Duke of Bavaria, the princes of Brunswick 
and Hesse, the kings of Sweden and Denmark, formed an 
alliance with France for the maintenance of the treaties of 
Westphalia, and placed themselves after a fashion under 
his protection. 

Internal Administration of Mazarin. — However great as 
a diplomatist, Mazarin did not show himself a great minis- 
ter. His internal administration was deplorable. He neg- 
lected commerce and agriculture ; he allowed the navy to 
dwindle away, and managed the finances in such a way that 
at his death the public treasury owed 430,000,000, while his 
private fortune amounted to 100,000,000, which would be 
equivalent to three or four times as much at the present 
time. Mazarin was a very kind relative ; he prevented the 
marriage of one of his nieces to Louis XIV., but he placed 
them all in advantageous positions. His oldest sister lived 



ADMINISTRATION OF MAZARIN. 415 

to see one of her daughters Princess of Conti ; the other, 
Duchess of Modena. The five daughters of his other sister 
were married to the Duke of Mercoeur, the Count of Soissons, 
the Roman constable Colonna, the Duke of Bouillon, and the 
Duke of La Meilleraye. France paid all of these dowries. 
His nephew was made Duke of Nivernais, and his brother, a 
poor monk buried in the seclusion of an Italian convent, 
was made archbishop of Aix and a cardinal. 

A few pensions to men of letters cannot be regarded as 
an offset to all this plunder, nor the expenses borne in es- 
tablishing a magnificent library (the Mazarin) which at a 
late time was opened to the public, nor the foundation of 
the college of the Four Nations. Mazarin had a very great 
love of the arts, though perhaps not the best taste in re- 
spect to them ; he brought from Italy a number of pictures, 
statues, and curiosities, even actors and machinists, who 
introduced the opera into France ; he formed, in 1655, the 
academy of painting and sculpture. He died at Yincennes, 
March 9th, 1661, at the age of fifty-nine, in despair at leav- 
ing his beautiful paintings, his statues, his books, affairs, 
and life ; and for all that " facing death becomingly." 



THIRTEENTH PERIOD. 



Tkiumph of Absolute Monarchy (1661-1715). 



CHAPTER L. 

LOUIS XIV.— INTERNAL ORGANIZATIO N. — COLBERT ; 
LOUVOIS; VAUBAN. 

(1661-1683 A.D.) 

Division of the Reign of Louis XIV. — Charles V. used to 
say that fortune was no friend to okl men. The greatest 
king of the Bourbon race had the same experience. Long 
reigns, indeed, often present two contradictory aspects ; one 
season of splendor and prosperity, another of downfall and 
misery, because few princes are sufficiently masters of them- 
selves to be able to modify their own ideas according to the 
changes in the needs of the people. 

The brilliant period of the reign of Louis XIV. extends 
from 1661 to 1683, from the death of Mazarin to the death 
of Colbert, and is filled with those stormy characters which 
the preceding years had produced : for example, in internal 
administration, Colbert ; in war, Turenne, Cond^ Duquesne, 
and Louvois ; in letters, Molifere, La Fontaine, Boileau, 
Eacine, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Madame S^vigne ; in art, 
Lebrun, Claude Lorraine, Puget, Hardouin-Mansard, and 
Perrault. Then the king was successful in everything ; 
permanent conquests were made, great works were accom- 
plished, splendid monuments erected. 

After 1683 Louis XIV., who was then advanced in life, 
became delicate : Louvois, who had no longer the useful coun- 
terpoise of Colbert, and Madame de Maintenon, ruled the 
monarch. Joy and happiness departed with his young 



LOUIS xir. 417 

years. The great men passed away and were replaced by a 
weaker race. Louis remained alone, the last of his genera- 
tion, and went to his grave, sad and conquered, leaving . 
France without industry, without commerce, exhausted, and 
cursing the great reign which she had for twenty-five years 
greeted with enthusiastic acclamations. 

Louis XIV. assumes Sole Charge of the Government. — 
In 1661 Louis XIV. was twenty-three years old, and had « 
reigned eighteen years without becoming known. Mazarin 
alone had understood him. He said, " There is stuff enough 
in him to make four kings and an honest man." Mazarin's ' 
correspondence attests the constant efforts made by the 
cardinal to prepare his pupil to take the direction of affairs. 
When the ministers came, after his death, to ask the king 
to whom they should report in the future, " To me," was 
his answer. He accepted all the cares of royalty ; he was, 
said La Bruy^re, his own prime minister, and demanded 
that the principal functionaries should correspond directly 
with him. Eor thirty years he worked regularly eight 
hours a day. He recommended his son, in truly eloquent 
words, not to forget " that it is necessary to reign by work- 
ing ; that it is ingratitude and insolence to God, and injus- 
tice and tyranny to men, to wish to do one without the 
other." 

Ideas of Louis XIV. on Government. — The young prince 
had already conceived the whole plan of his policy. Louis 
XIV. was the first to establish in France the theory of , 
absolute monarchy. In his eyes royalty was a divine in- 
stitution ; sovereigns were the representatives of God upon 
earth, and on this account participated in his power and 
infallibility. Louis not only believed himself to be the 
master of his subjects ; he regarded himself, according to 
feudal ideas, as the proprietor of their estates — a monstrous 
doctrine which carries us back to the midst of the Oriental 
monarchies. Yet it seemed to him that this authority, to 
which he recognized no limits but those imposed by religion 
and his own conscience, ought never to remain inactive. 
He believed that kings had imperious duties to fulfil. " We 
ought," said he, "to consider the welfare of our subjects 
rather than our own; we should make laws with a view 
solely to their advantage ; and the power we have over 
them should only make us work the more effectually for 
their happiness." 



418 LOUIS XIV. 

It was thus that Louis XIV. conceived of the profession 
of king : let us see how he reigned. 

The Councils. — The upper council, into which the king 
called the secretaries of State and sometimes the princes of 
the blood, corresponded to the present council of ministers ; 
it had the general direction of policy and of important 
affairs ; it also decided appeals from the council of State. 

The council of State, or king's council, was the great 
administrative body of the kingdom. It met four times a 
week, under the presidency of the chancellor, each time to 
attend to affairs of a diiferent nature. ¥or instance, the 
Monday council read and discussed reports addressed to 
ministers by the governors of provinces ; this was the 
council of despatches. On Wednesday the council of finances 
was held ; it deliberated upon new levies of taxes, made up 
the schedule of the taille, or real estate and personal tax. 
Friday was the day for the examination of complaints of 
private individuals or royal officers against the tax-farmers 
and the collectors, and for the adjudication of leases of taxa- 
tion. On Saturday the council of parties decided conflicts of 
jurisdiction between tribunals, and interpreted the royal ordi- 
nances. The councillors of State were eighteen in number. 

The Grand Council had control of all proceedings concern- 
ing bishoprics and benefices in the gift of the king ; it 
decided cases evoked from the sovereign courts, and contra- 
dictory decrees passed by different parliaments. 

Ministers. — The king's clerks became, in 1547, secretaries 
of State ; they were four in number ; each of them adminis- 
trated, not a certain class of affairs, but all the affairs of 
certain provinces : they divided France among themselves 
geographically. It was an impracticable form of organiza- 
tion. In 1619 one among them was put in charge of war 
matters ; in 1626 another received charge of foreign affairs ; 
and finally, under Louis XIV., the ministry of the king's 
household and of ecclesiastical affairs and that of marine 
affairs were instituted. The offices of chancellor, or keeper 
of the seals, the head of the magistracy, and that of comp- 
troller of the finances composed virtually tAvo other minis- 
tries. 

The Ministers of Louis XIV. — The ministers that Mazarin 
had left him were Pierre Siguier, keeper of the seals and 
chancellor ; Michel le Tellier, secretary of war ; Hugues de 
Liorme, in charge of marine affairs until 1669, and of foreign 



LOUIS XIV. 419 

affairs ; Nicolas Foucquet, superintendent of finances. The 
first two were distinguished men; the third was a man 
above the average ; the fourth, Foucquet, was a noble patron 
of letters, but he had brought, or rather continued, the finances 
in a condition of extreme disorder, and he helped himself 
without scruple from the treasury. He increased the 
inventories of expenses which were shown to the king, and 
diminished the lists of receipts ; and finally, what was more 
reprehensible, he seemed to be always trying to fortify his 
position to provide against the case of disgrace. But the 
ting had a private minister who informed him every day 
of the superintendent's deceptions ; this was Jean-Baptiste 
Colbert, born at Eheims in 1619, of an old family of mer- 
chants and magistrates, an intendant under Mazarin, who 
had recommended him to the king. At a magnificent festi- 
val which Foucquet gave in honor of the king, Louis was 
offended by the ostentatious device which he read in every 
thing, " Quo non ascendam ? " and by all the a]3pointments 
of the entertainment, which were truly regal. A few weeks 
after, Foucquet was in the Bastile. He was accused of 
wasteful management, which was very just, and of a plot 
against the State which was never proved. At the end of 
three years nine judges pronounced him deserving of death, 
and thirteen of banishment. The king changed the sentence 
to perpetual imprisonment, and Foucquet was shut up in 
the fortress of Pinerolo, where he died after nineteen years 
of captivity. Colbert succeeded Foucquet, with the title of 
comptroller-general. In 1666 Michel le Tellier gave his 
ofl&ce to his son, the celebrated Louvois: the principal min- 
istries of Louis XIV. were then filled up. 

Colbert. — Colbert did the work of about five of the pres- 
ent ministries ; that of the king's household, with the fine 
arts, that of finances, that of agriculture, including com- 
merce, that of public works, and after 1669, that of marine ; 
an overwhelming task, which, however, did not crush him. 
" Jean-Baptiste Colbert," says a contemporary, " had a stern 
countenance, bvit upon acquaintance he proved easy of 
access, expeditious, and perfectly reliable. He was of the - 
opinion that good faith is the most solid foundation of affairs. 
Possessing a strong though heavy mind, adapted mainly for 
calculation, he cleared up all the confusion in which the 
superintendents and clerks of the treasury had involved 
affairs in order that they might fish in troubled waters." 



420 LOUIS XIV. 

Reorganization of the Finances. — The finances had now 
fallen back into the chaos from which Sully had extricated 
them. The public debt was 430,000,000, the revenues were 
consumed two years in advance, and of the 84,000,000 of 
annual taxes, scarcely 35,000,000 went into the treasury. 
Colbert began by punishing the malversations committed for 
twenty-five years by the officers of finance. The farmers 
of the revenues, who had taken advantage of the needs of 
the State to lend to it at usurious rates, were made to dis- 
gorge : the fines amounted to 110,000,000. These measures 
suited the spirit of the times, but were not in accordance 
with wise policy ; the surest plan by which a state can 
secure itself against having to make disadvantageous terms 
in days of adversity is always to abide by its plighted word 
in days of prosperity. 

Colbert was the institutor of the budget. Until then 
money had been paid out indiscriminately, without having 
regard to the receipts of the treasury. He was the first 
to draw up each year a statement in which the pi'obable 
revenues and expenses were estimated in advance. When 
a secretary of State had to make an expenditure of money, 
he signed a special order for the payment ; the receiving 
party presented it to the comptroller-general, who assigned 
the payment of the sum to a special fund, and presented 
the assignment to the king for his signature. 

Colbert modified the form and assessment of taxes. The 
taille, or land-tax, was personal; that is, paid by all common- 
ers. He desired to make it real; that is, payable by the 
landed property, no matter who might be the owners. It 
amounted, in 1661, to 53,000,000; he reduced it to 32,000,000. 
In the midst of the troubles of the Fronde many persons 
had assumed titles of nobility or bought them. A royal 
ordinance revoked all patents of nobility granted during the 
past thirty years, and forty thousand wealthy families thus 
became again subject to taxation, which, of course, lightened 
the burdens of their neighbors. The comptroller-general 
very reasonably preferred the aides, or indirect taxes, to the 
taille, but he increased or created taxes on coffee, tobacco, 
wines, cards, lotteries, etc., and from 1,500,000 francs, in- 
creased them to 21,000,000. 

He did not approve of loans ; not that he did not appreci- 
ate the advantage of borrowing at a low rate in order to 
discharge burdensome debts, but he doubted the expediency 



LOUIS XIV. 421 

of giving Louis XIV. the opportunity to burden the future 
for the benefit of the present. 

The following is a summary of the financial administra- 
tion of Colbert : in 1661, out of 84,000,000 livres of taxes the 
treasurer had to pay 52,000,000 for annuities and salaries ; 
only 32,000,000 remained, and 60,000,000 were paid out; 
deficit, 28,000,000. In 1683, the year in which Colbert 
died, the taxes amounted to 112,000,000, in spite of a re- 
duction of 22,000,000 on the taille; salaries and annuities 
now required only 28,000,000 ; the net revenue of the treas- 
'ury was 89,000,000. Thus, on the one hand, Colbert had in- 
creased the receipts by 28,000,000, diminished the annuities 
and salaries 29,000,000, which constituted an annual net 
saving to the State of 57,000,000 ; while on the other, he 
had relieved the common people of 22,000,000, by reducing 
the taille in the same proportion. The figures speak for 
themselves. 

Agriculture. — Sully had sacrificed industry to agricul- 
ture; Colbert did not sacrifice agriculture to industry, as 
has often been said. He relieved it of taxes which op- 
pressed it; he forbade again the seizure of animals and 
implements of labor in the collection of taxes due the State ; 
he encouraged the improvement of live-stock, and ordered 
the draining of marshes. But he made a mistake in being 
influenced by that popular prejudice which regarded free 
trade in grain as a promoter of scarcity. Colbert succeeded 
in reducing the price of wheat for manufacturers and sol- 
diers ; but the farmers, not finding it profitable, ceased in 
many districts to raise it at all. 

Industry. — Industry was still in its infancy ; the French 
imported almost everything. Colbert, coming as he did 
from the shop of a merchant of E,heims, determined that 
France should be able to furnish her own supplies. He 
organized the protective system, injurious to a matured 
industry, but indispensable to a growing one. This was, in 
his eyes, only a temporary measure, which would sufiice to 
make it unnecessary for the kingdom to obtain any neces- 
sities from foreigners. 

Thanks to the fact that Colbert spared no expense in buy- 
ing or obtaining, by means fair or foul, the industrial secrets 
of neighboring nations, and attracting the most skilful work- 
men to France, the number of manufactures increased rap- 
idly. He sustained them by subsidies wisely distributed. 



422 ' LOUIS XIV. 

He obtained from the Cliurcli the suppression of seventeen 
holidays. In order to increase the number of workers, he 
endeavored to reduce tlie number of monks, and to postpone 
the age when they sliould be permitted to take religious vows. 
The result was that in a short time the French cloths had 
no rivals in Europe ; tin, steel, porcelain, morocco leather, 
which had always been imported, were manufactured in 
France ; the linens and serges of Holland, the laces and 
velvets of Genoa, the carpets of Persia and Turkey, were 
not only imitated, but equalled ; the rich stuffs in which gold 
and silver were mingled with silk were fabricated at Tours 
and at Lyons ; liner glass was made at Tour-la- Ville and at 
Paris than at Venice ; the tapestries of Flanders were sur- 
passed by those of the Gobelins. 

It is worthy of remark that Colbert imprinted upon 
French industry the stamp which it has borne ever since. 
He seemed to have foreseen the position which France should 
occupy in the industrial world by employing keen intelli- 
gence and delicate taste in the manufacture of the most im- 
portant articles. It was under the influence of this foresight 
that the manufacture of the Gobelin tapestries was organ- 
ized, that it might be a model school where art and industry 
should join hands. 

Internal Commerce ; PubUe Works. — Colbert desired to 
have only one line of custom-houses, on the frontier, but each 
province was surrounded by them. He reduced their num- 
ber, however, and suppressed them in the case of twelve 
provinces. He encouraged the exportation of wines and 
brandies, and declared Dunkirk, Bayonne, and Marseilles 
free ports. He established bonded warehouses in the French 
ports, where, in case of re-exportation, duties already paid 
should be refunded, granted a free passage for foreign mer- 
chandise through all the provinces, repaired the high roads, 
which had become impassable, and constructed new ones. 
Finally, he -projected the canal of Burgundy, ordered the 
construction of that of Orleans, and dug that of Languedoc, 
which united the Mediterranean Sea and the ocean. The 
port of Cette was built at one of its extremities ; Toulouse 
was at the other, and from Toulouse the Garonne formed 
an open road to Bordeaux and the ocean. This work, gigan- 
tic for that period, was commenced in 1664, and continued 
without interruption until 1681. 

Commerce, thus assisted, developed rapidly. In order to 



LOUIS XIV. 423 

regulate and enlighten tins new activity, Colbert re-estab- 
lislied, in 1665, the council of commerce, instituted by 
Henry IV. Louis XIV. presided over it regularly every 
fortnight. Similar councils, established in the provinces, 
were "to assemble every year, and choose deputies who 
should present their requests to the minister." 

Maritime Commerce and Colonies. — Foreigners had en- 
grossed all the maritime commerce, even the coasting trade. 
Of twenty-five thousand ships in Europe, the Dutch had 
fifteen or sixteen thousand, and the French, at most, only 
five or six hundred. Foucquet had established anchorage- 
dues of fifty sous (six or seven francs) a ton on foreign 
ships, payable on entering and leaving French ports. Col- 
bert retained this duty, which was for the French marine 
almost what the navigation act has been for the English. 
He granted to national ships bounties on exportations 
and importations ; and encouraged the builders of ships 
intended for oceanic navigation, by other bounties, so that 
the merchant marine, stimulated and protected, developed 
rapidly. 

But the English and Dutch had still the advantage of the 
French in having a larger experience, assured markets for 
sales, markets of purchase which they had frequented for a 
century, and immense capital which enabled them to dare 
and risk more. Colbert, in order to compete with them, 
substituted privileged associations for the efforts of isolated 
individuals. He established five great companies on the 
model of the Dutch and English companies, — those of the 
East and West Indies, the North, the Levant, and Senegal. 
He granted them the exclusive monopoly of trade with these 
distant coasts, and also bounties, and made them consider- 
able advances. 

He tried to restore life to the colonial system, which had 
been much neglected since Eichelieu's time. France pos- 
sessed only Canada with Acadia, Cayenne, the island of 
Bourbon, a few factories in Madagascar and the Indies. 
Colbert bought, for less than a million, Martinique, Guade- 
loupe, St. Lucia, and several other of the Lesser Antilles 
(1664) ; he placed the French buccaneers, who had seized 
upon the eastern part of St. Domingo, under the protection 
of France, sent new colonies to Cayenne, took Newfound- 
land, and commenced the occupation of the magnificent 
valley of the Mississippi, or Louisiana. In Africa, he took 



424 LOUIS XIV. 

Goree from the Dutch, and took possession of the east 
shores of Madagascar. In Asia, the India Company estab- 
lished itself at Surat, at Chandernagore, and later iat Pondi- 
cherry. And finally, in order to keep all the commerce of 
the colonies under the national flag, Colbert closed their 
ports to all foreign ships, while for the purpose of develop- 
ing agriculture he prohibited (in 1669) the importation 
into France of tobaccos and sugars from Brazil — an unfor- 
tunate measure, which had the effect of alienating Portugal 
and throwing her into the arms of England. 

Military Marine. — Colbert first repaired the few vessels 
that Mazarin had left in the ports of France ; then he bought 
some from Sweden and Holland, employed builders and rope- 
makers from Hambu":g, Riga, and Danzig, and established 
dockyards at Dunkirk, Havre, and Eochefort. Henry IV. 
had discovered Toulon, and Eichelieu Brest. Vauban sur- 
rounded the latter with formidable defences. He also con- 
structed, after the peace of Nymwegen, immense works at 
Toulon, which made this city one of the finest ports in the 
world. 

In order to increase the navy, Colbert instituted the 
maritime registration, which obliged the maritime popula- 
tion of the coasts to furnish, in return for certain privileges, 
the crews necessary for manning the vessels. This institu- 
tion was completed by the establishment of a system of 
pensions for sailors. In 1661 the fleet was composed of 
only thirty vessels ; in 1678 it numbered one hundred and 
twenty, and five years later one hundred and seventy-six. 
In 1692 the king had one hundred and thirty-one ships, one 
hundred and thirty-three frigates, and one hundred and one 
other vessels. The administration of naval affairs was 
se|)arated from the military command, with advantage to 
both services. The corps of marine guards, composed of a 
thousand gentlemen, was instituted for the purpose of 
training officers ; also a school for cannoneers, a school of 
hydrography, an upper naval council, and a council for naval 
constructions. 

The Fine Arts. — Colbert, it is true, had reformed the 
finances, commerce, and navigation, but he surrounded them 
with such minute regulations that the initiative of individu- 
als was too often supplanted by that of the government ; 
he endeavored also to regulate thought, and place the moral 
life of France as he had placed its material life, and as 



LOUIS XIV. 425 

Eiclielieu had placed its political life, — in the hands of the 
king. He instituted, in 1663, the Academy of Inscriptions 
and Belles-Lettres ; in 1666, the Academy of Sciences. The 
Academy of Music was organized in 1669, and that of Archi- 
tecture in 1671. A school of Fine Arts, established at 
Rome (1667), received the pupils who had taken the prizes 
at the Academy of Painting in Paris. More than ten 
thousand volumes and a large number of precious manu- 
scri})ts were added to the Eoyal library ; the Mazarin library 
was opened to the public ; the Jardin des Plantes enlarged ; 
the foundation of provincial academies encouraged. 

Corneille, Kacine, Boileau, Moli^re, and twenty others 
received pensions ; even foreigners shared the king's gener- 
osity. It must be said, however, that the literary budget 
was never very burdensome. In the year when pensions 
reached the highest figure the total expenditure did not 
exceed one hundred thousand livres. 

Louvois ; Eef orm of the Army. — The attempt of Francis I. 
to create a French infantry in the form of provincial legions 
had not succeeded. In 1558 Henry II. had reorganized 
these legions, which he divided into regiments and com- 
panies. The four oldest regiments, those of Picardy, Cham- 
pagne, Navarre, and Piedmont, had the first rank in the 
army. Under Louis XIII. regiments were divided into 
battalions. They were recruited by voluntary enlistment, 
which often brought in the dregs of the people, and com- 
missions were sold. The cavalry had been organized by 
Charles 'VII. ; it was composed of nobles. Louis XII. added 
to this heavy cavalry a lighter cavalry, which foreigners 
joined, and in 1558 the dragoons were organized. The light- 
horse date from Henry IV. ; the musketry and riflemen, from 
Louis XIII. The cavalry also was divided into regiments, 
squadrons, and companies. The artillery was numerous, 
but had no especial corps to manage and defend it ; the same 
was the case with the engineers. All these arms awaited 
the advent of the great administrator to whom Louis XIV. 
confided the portfolio of war in 1666. 

Colbert had organized peace ; Louvois, " the greatest and 
most brutal of clerks," organized war. Franyois-Michel le 
Tellier, Marquis of Louvois, born in 1641, entered the office 
of his father, the secretary of State, and was initiated by a 
long apprenticeship into the science of military administra- 
tion, to which he brought an activity equal to that of Col- 



426 LOUIS XIV. 

bert. Wlien Louis XIV. decided to govern alone, Louvois 
became really minister of war, although, lie did not succeed 
le Tellier till 1666. He reformed the army, and his reforms 
lasted as long as the old monarchy. He preserved the system 
of voluntary enlistment ; he diminished the abuses and the 
danger of it. He established the use of uniforms, instituted 
magazines of provisions and supplies, barracks, military 
hospitals, and the H6tel des Invalides ; also the corps of 
engineers, the schools of artillery, the companies of grena- 
diers, the regiments of hussars, and companies of cadets. 

The army still felt the influence of feudal times. The 
soldier belonged less to the king than to his colonel ; the 
cavalry had too much prominence, and the nobility would 
serve nowhere else. With the reign of Louis XIV. the 
French infantry became, and it long remained, the best in 
the world. Louvois substituted the musket and bayonet 
for the pike as its characteristic arm. He revolutionized 
the army by establishing a fixed order of promotion and by 
organizing inspection. He did not abolish the sale of com- 
missions, which was operated for the sole benefit of the 
nobles ; but a certain amount of service became a prerequi- 
site to advancement, and promotions, beginning with the 
rank of colonel, became dependent upon seniority. The 
nobility attacked with bitter hatred the minister who hum- 
bled "men born to command others." Louvois exacted, with 
inflexible firmness, that each man should do his duty ; to be 
sure of this, he instituted inspectors-general, who continu- 
ally upheld the king's authority and his own, and stern 
reproval was the lot of the negligent officers. With such 
care, France was enabled to arm 125,000 men for the war in 
Flanders ; for the war with the Netherlands, 180,000 ; be- 
fore the treaty of Eyswyk, 300,000 ; during the wars of the 
Spanish succession, 450,000. 

Fortification of the Frontiers ; Vauban. — There was one 
subject, the only one perhaps, upon which the minister of j 
war and the minister of marine acted in concert : this wasj 
the fortification of the kingdom. For the accomplishment] 
of this great work they engaged the man who, next toj 
Colbert, is the greatest of this reign. Le Prestre de Vaubanl 
was a gentleman of very small fortune, born near Saulieu,] 
in Burgundy (1633). His father had died in the service.' 
A prior of the neighborhood took him in and brought him] 
up. He was just seventeen years old when the disturbances J 



LOUIS XIV. 427 

of the Fronde were at their height. One morning Vauban 
ran off and joined the great Cond^; he fought well and 
studied better. The good prior had taught him some little 
geometry ; he continued the study, and those early lessons 
influenced his career. After joining the royal army he 
served under the most celebrated French engineer of his 
time. As early as 1663 he had gained such a reputation 
that Louis XIV. placed him in charge of the fortifications 
of Dunkirk. This first work of the young engineer was 
a masterpiece. From that time Vauban was the one man 
indispensably necessary to all generals when laying siege 
to cities. In time of war he captured cities, in time of 
peace he fortified them. It has been estimated that he 
worked upon three hundred existing fortresses, constructed 
thirty-three new ones, conducted fifty-three sieges, and took 
part in one hundred and forty active engagements. 

France was not deficient in natural frontiers save on 
the northeast, from the Rhine to Dunkirk. The barrier 
which nature had denied, was given to France by Vauban. 
Beside Dunkirk, he armed Lille, Metz, and Strassburg with 
their then formidable fortresses. He constructed Mau- 
beuge, repaired Charlemont, and connected these two places 
with Philippeville, in order to cover Picardy. He closed 
the outlet of the Ardennes between the Meuse and the 
Moselle by Longwy. In the valley of the Moselle, the 
special route of invasion from G-ermany, he doubled the 
strength of Metz by constructing Thionville. He built 
Saarlouis between the Moselle and the Vosges, to cover 
Lorraine. Bitsch and Pfalzburg became the principal de- 
fences of the Vosges, Landau the bulwark of Alsace ; and 
this province, recently conquered, was firmly secured to 
France by several strong fortresses, and especially Strass- 
burg. Between the Vosges and the Jura he fortified Bel- 
fort. He added new works at Besan9on and at Brianyon, 
and built Mont-Dauphin almost on the ridge of the Alps. 
The Pyrenees offered only two passes practicable to armies ; 
Vauban built Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and Mont-Louis to 
cover them. He visited the coasts several times and left 
everywhere traces of his presence. He erected fortifica- 
tions at Antibes and transformed Toulon. He reconstructed 
the walls of Rochelle on a new plan, built the fortress of the 
Isle of R6 and fortified Brest. His plans for Cherbourg 
and Havre were not carried out. Boulogne received some 
new works ; he constructed important ones at Calais. 



428 LOUIS XIY. 

Vauban, who fortified places, knew still better how to 
capture them. He advanced slowly but surely ; he marched 
under cover of his lines, so that the troops were sufficiently 
within reach of each other for mutual support, never made 
outright attacks when they could be dispensed with, was 
sparing of the common soldiers, who had formerly been 
sacrificed with prodigality, and attained his end incompar- 
ably sooner. No fortress proved impregnable to him. 
The invention of the socket, which enables infantry to fire 
with the bayonet on the end of the gun, is also due to him. 

In his many journeys around the frontiers by land and 
sea Vauban had an eye to commercial as well as to mili- 
tary situations ; he multiplied military plans, but was not 
neglectful of those wnich would encourage agriculture and 
peaceful industry. He marked out havens, canals to be 
di»g, piers and dams to be constructed; he pointed out 
methods of improving the navigation of the streams and 
rivers. Colbert himself possessed no higher degree of love 
for the public welfare than did this great citizen. 

Legislative Reforms. — In 1665 Colbert proposed to re- 
construct the whole legislation of France ; he demanded at 
the outset that justice should be free, that the sale of offices 
should be abolished, that the number of monks should be 
diminished, and the useful professions encouraged. A 
commission was appointed, composed of councillors of State 
and "masters of requests." When the work was completed 
they discussed it with prominent members of Parliament, 
in the presence of ministers, and under the presidency of 
Chancellor Seguier, and sometimes under that of the king. 
Six codes were the result of these deliberations ; in 1667 
the civil ordinance, or Code Louis, which abolished some 
unjust forms of judicial procedure which had come down 
from the Middle Ages, and abridged others ; in 1669, that 
of tvaters and forests, the principal provisions of which are 
still in force; in 1670, the ordinance of criminal instruction, 
which limited the application of torture and various cases 
of provisory imprisonment, dictated uniform rules for all 
courts, but permitted neither counsel nor defence for the 
accused in capital cases, and retained the atrocious severity 
of penalties ; in 1673, the ordinance of commerce, a really 
glorious achievement of Colbert ; in 1681, that of the marine 
and colonies ; in 1685, the black code, which regulated the 
condition of the negroes in the French colonies. These or- 



LOUIS XIV. 429 

dinances are the greatest work of codification which was 
executed from Justinian's time to ISTapoleon's. A portion 
of them are still in force ; the ordinance of the marine com- 
poses almost all the second book of the present French code 
of commerce. 

De Lionne ; Foreign and Diplomatic Affairs. — If Colbert 
and Louvois assisted Louis XIV. to make successful warfare 
by the re-establishment of finances, the creation of a marine, 
and the reformation of the army, Lionne, secretary of 
State, also paved the way to success by his negotiations. 
Moreover, the king paid close attention to this department ; 
he himself wrote the first despatches to the ambassadors, 
frequently made rough draughts of the most important 
letters, and alwaj's read the instructions sent out in his 
name. When Lionne died, in 1671, the king appointed, as 
his successor, the Marquis of Pomponne, who had managed 
successfully several embassies. Pomponne directed all the 
negotiations which brought about the x^eace of ISTymwegen ; 
but Louis found him far inferior to Lionne. 

Centralization. — Some of the ministers of Louis XIV., 
and particularly Colbert and Louvois, were certainly great 
administrators, but they Avere not and never could be great 
statesmen. Colbert himself only endeavored to make France 
richer, in order to make the king more powerful. All of 
them labored to build uj^ that excessive centralization which 
enveloped the whole country, its industry, its commerce, its 
body and soul, with a thousand bonds of minute regulations, 
so that the initiative of the ministers constantly took the 
place of the free action of individuals and communities. 
The result of this system was that France lived less by her 
own life than by that of the government. When age and 
sickness should weaken the hand which was felt every- 
where, everything would decline. But for the present, at 
any rate, and for twenty years yet, this government, which 
constituted itself the universal guardian, was to give the. 
people security, glory, and prosperity, in compensation for 
the liberty of which it deprived them. 



430 LOUIS XIV. 



CHAPTER LI. 

LOUIS XIV. — EXTERNAL HISTORY AND CONQUESTS 
FROM 1661-1679. 

State of Europe in 1661. — Louis XIV. liad skilful minis- 
ters, the most united and best situated kingxlom in Europe, 
an authority which never experienced any opposition, finan- 
ces which Colbert had put in good order, an army which 
Louvois had organized under the best generals, and behind 
this army a brave nation of twenty millions of souls. 
Meanwhile Spain was approaching that utter decay towards 
which the inordinate ambition of Philip II. had hastened 
her : Philip IV. (1621-1665) had lost Catalonia and the 
kingdom of Naples for several years ; Artois, Cerdana, 
Iloussillon, and Portugal, forever. Germany was chaos 
itself. Austria, governed by a prince of inferior ability, 
Leopold I. (1657-1705), was without influence in the Em- 
pire, and had enough to do to defend herself against the 
Turks. Italy no longer counted for anything. Sweden was 
exhausted by her heroic efforts under the great Gustavus. 
The English had just re-established the dynasty of the 
Stuarts (1660), which by its opposition to the national 
sentiment was for a quarter of a century to neutralize 
their influence and hinder their prosperity. Finally, though 
the Netherlands were rich and their navy powerful, they 
were without territory, and consequently without lasting 
strength. Louis XIV., as he contemplated Europe when he 
determined to take the government into his own hands, saw 
there neither king nor people who could equal him and 
Erance ; and the first acts of his foreign policy revealed a 
sense of his own dignity, even a haughtiness which is aston- 
ishing, but which was justified by success. 

First Acts of the Foreign Policy of Louis XIV. — His am- 
bassador at London was insulted by the followers of the 
Spanish ambassador in a question of precedence. Hearing 
of this, the king recalled his envoy at Madrid, sent home the 
Spanish envoy, and threatened his father-in-law with war 



■,*- 



LOUIS XIV. 431 

if he did not make most satisfactory amends. Philip IV. 
agreed (1662), and the Count of Fuentes declared in his 
name, at Fontainebleau, in the presence of the court and the 
foreign ambassadors, " that the Spanish ministers should not 
henceforth contend for precedence with those of France." 
Pope Alexander VII. was forced to undergo a similar 
humiliation. Portugal was feebly defending her independ- 
ence against the Spaniards ; Louis helped to seat the house 
of Braganza upon the throne (1665). The Barbary pirates 
infested the Mediterranean; the king constituted himself 
protector of all the nations bordering on the sea or navi- 
gating it. His admiral, the Duke of Beaufort, gave chase 
to the pirates with fifteen ships, set fire to their dens in 
Algiers and Tunis, and forced these barbarians to respect 
the name of France and the commerce of Christian nations 
(1665) . The new king of England, Charles II., sold Dun- 
kirk to Louis for five millions (1662) : it was immediately 
surrounded by strong fortifications, and became an object 
of regret and terror to the English. At the same time he 
concluded an alliance with the States-General in order to 
secure in advance their neutrality toward his projects 
against Spain. War having broken out, in 1665, between 
the Dutch and the English, Louis joined the former, but 
was careful not to engage many of his ships. By the treaty 
of Breda he restored three West India islands to the Eng- 
lish in exchange for Acadia (1667). 

Louis aided the emperor .against the Turks, and the 
Venetians in the defence of Candia. This assistance lent 
to the enemies of the Turks was a deviation from the an- 
cient policy of France. Louis would soon also renounce 
the other parts of its policy, the alliance with the Prot- 
estant States. He was to undertake to play the part of 
Charles V. and Philip II., — that of armed chief of Cathol- 
icism and absolute monarch. He was to aim, as they did, 
at preponderance in Europe, and this ambition was to be the 
misfortune of France as it had already been of Spain. 

War in Flanders (1667) ; Right of Devolution. — The death 
of the king of Spain in 1665 was the occasion of the first 
war of Louis XIV. Philip IV. left only one son, four years 
old, the child of his second wife. The infanta Maria Theresa, 
who had been for six years queen of France, was born of a 
former marriage. It was the custom in the Netherlands 
that the paternal heritage should devolve upon the children 



432 LOUIS XIY. 

of the first marriage, to tlie exclusion of the second. Louis 
XIV. accordingly claimed these provinces in the name of 
his wife. The court of Spain maintained that this right of 
devolution was a civil custom which could not be applied 
to the transmission of states ; and that moreover the infanta, 
on marrying, had renounced all right to the monarchy of her 
father. The French ministry replied that the renunciations 
were null because Maria Theresa was a minor at the time, 
and because her dower had not been paid. But the king of 
France counted much more on his arms than on his reasons. 
The Southern Netherlands, the natural continuation of the 
French territory and the French idiom, had no aversion to 
a union with France. 

" Spain lacked a navy, an army, and money. She had no 
longer any commerce ; her manufactures of Seville and 
Segovia had greatly declined; agriculture was destroyed; 
the population which had amounted to twenty millions 
under Arab rule, was now reduced to six millions " (Mignet). 
In order to deprive her of all help from outside, Louis XIV. 
made sure of the neutrality of England and the United 
Provinces, obtained from the German princes of the League 
of the Rhine a promise to furnish him troops, and even won 
over the emperor. 

It was a military promenade rather than an invasion. The 
king entered Flanders with fifty thousand men and Turenne 
(1667). Town after town fell, only Lille making any serious 
resistance. In three months the entire province was sub- 
jugated. At the approach of winter a truce was proposed 
to the Spaniards : the governor of the Netherlands, Castel- 
Eodrigo, haughtily refused it. This fit of pride was pun- 
ished by additional loss of territory. Preparations having 
been made with the utmost secrecy, suddenly ten thousand 
men collected by twenty different routes assembled the same 
day in Franche-Comt^, a few leagues from Besangon, and 
the great Cond6 appeared at their head. In three weeks 
Franche-Comt6 was subjugated. 

These rapid successes disturbed the neighboring states, 
especially the Netherlands ; they concluded with England 
and Sweden the Triple Alliance, which offered its media- 
tion to France, and imposed it upon Spain. Turenne and 
Cond6 desired that no attention should be paid to it, and 
promised the conquest of the Netherlands before the end of 
the campaign. They were right, for none of the three medi- 



LOUIS XIV. 433 

atorial powers were ready for tlie war. But this time Louis 
XIV. was not bold enough. The king of Spain seemed about 
to die, and had no heir. Louis thought it was useless to 
fight for a few cities when he was going to obtain an empire, 
and signed the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), which 
took from him Franche-Comt^ and left him only his conquests 
in Flanders. 

Causes of War with Holland. — Louis XIV. did not for- 
give the Dutch for this interference in his affairs. He had 
been shocked by the republican liberty of their ambassador. 
Van Beuningen, sdiepen of Amsterdam, in the conferences of 
Aix-la-Chapelle. He complained also of the insolence of 
their journalists, and particularly of the insulting medals 
which had been struck off after the peace. 

But however absolute a king may be, he does not set 
Europe on fire for such trifles. What historians have called 
a war of medals, that is, of personal resentment, was also a 
war of tariffs. Louis XIV. doubtless was not fond of those 
proud republicans ; but Colbert detested them as commer- 
cial rivals of the French. The Dutch, attacked by tariffs, 
defended themselves by additional duties on French wines, 
brandies, and manufactures (1668). Louvois, for his part, 
considered that "the true method of succeeding in the con- 
quest of the Spanish Netherlands was to humiliate the 
Dutch." Thus it happened that the minister of finance was 
not opposed to the plans of the minister of war, and the 
king himself was influenced by his resentments to accept 
them. Yet it was an impolitic war, which overthrew the 
whole system of alliances with the Protestant states estab- 
lished by Henry IV. and Eichelieu. But Louis XIV. was 
much more the successor of Philip II. than the heir of the 
B^arnais. 

Alliances formed against Holland. — Louis first under- 
took to dissolve the Triple Alliance. It was not difficult to 
detach Sweden, the ancient ally of France, by an annual 
subsidy. England would have hesi bated longer if she had 
been consulted, but Louis XIV. made his application to the 
king. Charles II., entertaining ideas of absolutism, wished 
to govern without the assistance of Parliament, and in order 
to obtain the money he needed, allowed himself to be pen- 
sioned by France. Henrietta, sister of Charles II. and 
wife of Philip of Orleans, went to Dover, under pretext of 
visiting her brother, and induced him to unite with Louis 



434 LOUIS XIV. 



^ 



XIV. against the United Provinces (1670). At the same 
time De Lionne renewed the treaties with the emperor and 
the princes of the Leagne of the Ehine, who promised their 
neutrality or their co-operation. 

This diplomatic campaign was terminated in 1671. In 
Ishe following spring hostilities broke out. Thirty ships 
joined the English fleet of sixty. Ninety thousand men 
were assembled along the line from Sedan to Charleroi ; the 
German princes furnished about twenty thousand more. 
The king led this magnificent army in person; Cond6, 
Turenne, a,nd Luxembourg, commanded under him ; Vauban 
was to take the cities. What could the Netherlands oppose 
to such an enemy ? They had a formidable navy ; admirals 
who had been, up to that time, regarded as the greatest of 
the age, — Van Tromp and De Euyter ; rich colonies ; an 
immense commerce ; but they could count upon scarcely 
twenty-five thousand militiamen, badly equipped and with- 
out discipline, and upon the men promised them by the 
elector of Brandenburg. They were, moreover, weakened by 
internal divisions ; there were two parties : one, directed by 
John de Witt, grand pensioner of Holland, was entirely 
devoted to the cause of aristocratic liberty ; the other de- 
sired to reinstate the young Prince of Orange in the official 
position held by his ancestors, and, taking advantage of the 
present danger, caused him to be appointed captain-general 
at the age of twenty-two years. 

Invasion of the Netherlands (1672). — Meantime Louis 
XIV. was advancing along the Meuse, in the territories of 
the bishop of Li^ge, his ally, then along the right bank of 
the Rhine from Wesel to Toll-Huys. There some of the 
country people informed the Prince of Cond6 that the 
drought of the season had rendered the river fordable. 
The approach was easy, and only four or five hundred 
cavalry and two small regiments of infantry without cannon 
were to be seen on the other shore. The king and his great 
army therefore crossed almost unopposed and without the 
slightest difficulty. Such was King Louis's passage of the 
Ehine, celebrated as if it had been one of the greatest 
events that had occurred within the memory of man. 

The Ehine crossed, the Netherlands were open to inva- 
sion. The provinces of Overyssel, Gelderland, and Utrecht 
submitted without attempting to defend themselves ; there 
was scarcely an hour in the day that the king did not receive 



LOUIS XIV. 435 

news of some conquest. The generals proposed to march 
without delay upon Amsterdam. Louis preferred first to 
garrison the towns ; the army was consequently weakened 
and its operations retarded. Then the Dutch took courage, 
and placing all power in the hands of one man, elevated 
William of Orange to the stadtholderate. At the same 
time the infuriated populace tore into pieces the illus- 
trious leaders of the republican party, John and Cornelius 
de Witt. 

First Coalition against France (1673) . — The Prince of 
Orange at once gave a new turn to affairs ; he cut the dykes 
around Amsterdam and forced the French to retire before 
the flood. He sent ambassadors to all the courts of Europe 
to stir them up against France ; he treated with Spain, with 
the Duke of Lorraine, and with the emperor. Several 
princes of the League of the Rhine deserted. The result 
was the Grand Alliance of the Hague, the first of the great 
coalitions against France. 

Campaign of 1673; Capture of Maastricht. — But while 
the alliance was making its preparations Louis invested 
Maastricht, and Vauban took it for him. Marshal Luxem- 
bourg held the Dutch in check ; Turenne, who the preceding 
winter had driven the elector of Brandenburg as far as 
the Elbe, stopped the imperial forces, and the navy, aided 
by England, fought four battles against De Ruyter. In 
the last months of the year the imperial forces gathered 
in greater numbers, effected a junction with the Prince of 
Orange, captured Bonn, and quartered themselvesi in the 
electorate of Cologne. 

Conquest of Franche-Comte (1674). — The war was becom- 
ing European. Louis XIV. changed its plan. He aban- 
doned the Netherlands, turned all his forces against Spain, 
and advanced upon Franche-Comt6. This second conquest 
was almost as rapid as the first ; Besangon was taken in 
nine days, and the whole province in six weeks : it has 
remained ever since in the possession of France. 

Turenne saves Alsace (1674-1675). — The allies medi- 
tated, for this year, a formidable double invasion of France, 
by way of Lorraine and the ISTetherlands. Turenne was to 
prevent the one attack ; Conde, the other. Turenne took the 
offensive ; he passed the Ehine at Philippsburg, with twenty 
thousand men, burned the Palatinate, gained a number of 
small battles (July, 1674), in which he exhibited tactical 



436 LOUIS XIV. 

resources hitherto unkBOwn. But his military science could 
not always compensate for the want of numbers. Strass- 
burg, violating its neutrality, allowed seventy thousand 
Germans to pass into Alsace. It was believed at court that 
the province was lost, and Louvois ordered the marshal to 
retire into Lorraine. But Turenne appealed to the king for 
liberty of action. He remained in Alsace as long as he 
thought proper, annoyed the enemy incessantly, and, winter 
coming on, repassed the Vosges as if to take up his quarters 
in Lorraine. Suddenly, at the beginning of December, he 
broke up camp, traversed the whole length of the Yosges, 
and, after a march of twenty days over frightful roads, fell 
upon the imperial forces, who supposed that he was fifty 
leagues away : he defeated them at Miilhausen, at Colmar, 
at Tiirkheim, and drove them beyond the Ehine with great 
loss. This campaign, prepared with so much secrecy, exe- 
cuted with such far-seeing skill, and terminated in six weeks, 
excited enthusiasm throughout all France. 

Battle of Senef (1674). — While Turenne was victoriously 
driving back the invaders in the east, Cond6 was preventing 
ninety thousand Spaniards and Dutch from entering Cham- 
pagne. He had entrenched himself in a position which the 
Prince of Orange dared not attack. Then, following the lat- 
ter, he attacked his rear-guard at Senef, where a very 
obstinate and bloody battle was fought. The next day the 
two armies separated with a loss of seven or eight thousand 
men on each side. Cond6 forced the Prince of Orange to 
raise the siege of Oudenarde ; but Grave, the last remnant 
of the French conquests in the Netherlands, soon after 
opened its gates. 

Last Campaign of Turenne and Conde (1675). — In the 
spring Turenne again began operations in the Palatinate. 
The emperor sent Montecuccoli, who was considered a con- 
summate tactician, to oppose him. They occupied six weeks 
in following and watching each other. Finally they were 
about to give battle near Salzbach, when the marshal, while 
examining the position of a battery, was killed by a stray 
shot. His death was a public calamity. Louis XIV. had 
him interred at St. Denis, in the burial-place of kings. 
By Turenne's death all the fruits of a well-conducted cam- 
paign were lost ; the French, discouraged, fled towards the 
Ehine : Montecuccoli penetrated into Alsace. At the same 
time the Duke of Lorraine hastened to besiege Trier with 



LOUIS XIV. 437 

twenty thousand men; Cr^qui endeavored to aid him, but 
was beaten at Consarbruck, and forced to capitulate. 

After the death of Turenne, the Prince of Conde was sent 
into Alsace to stop the progress of Montecuccoli and reani- 
mate the courage of the troops. He compelled the imperial 
forces to raise the siege of Zabern and Hagenau, and to 
recross the Ehine. This was his last achievement ; he 
ceased to appear at the head of armies, and retired to Chan- 
tilly, where he lived among men of letters, philosophers 
even, till 1686. 

Campaign of 1676 ; Naval Victories ; Duquesne and D'Es- 
trees. — The following year the warfare of sieges, which 
Louis XIV. preferred, was renewed. Cond6 and Bouchain 
were captured; Maastricht, besieged by the Prince of Orange, 
was delivered; but the Germans recaptured Philippsburg. 
An unexpected triumph consoled France for these reverses 
and trifling victories. The inhabitants of Messina, being in 
revolt against Spain, had placed themselves under the pro- 
tection of Louis XIV. (1675) : he sent them a fleet with 
Duquesne as second in command. This great sailor, born 
at Dieppe in 1610, had first been owner and captain of a 
privateer; in the royal navy he passed through all the 
grades and became lieutenant-general, but could go no higher 
because of being a Protestant. On the coasts of Sicily he 
had, as opponents, De Ruyter and the Spaniards. A first 
battle, near the island of Stromboli, was indecisive (1676) ; a 
second, off Syracuse, resulted in a complete victory, and De 
Ruyter was killed. After crushing the enemy's fleet in a 
final encounter at Palermo, Prance had for some time the 
empire of the Mediterranean (1676). In that same year 
D'Estr^es recaptured Cayenne and destroyed in the port of 
Tobago a squadron of ten of the enemy's vessels. In 1678 
he captured the island itself and all the Dutch factories in 
Senegal. The French flag was supreme on the Atlantic as 
well as on the Mediterranean. 

Campaign of 1677; Cr6qui and Luxemljourg; Battle of 
Cassel. — Cr^qui had succeeded to Turenne in Germany and 
Luxembourg to Cond6 in the Netherlands. The first con- 
ducted a campaign worthy of Turenne. By a succession of 
skilful marches he protected Lorraine and Alsace against an 
adversary superior in numbers, and took Freiburg, thus 
transferring the war to the right bank of the Rhine. The 
second, with the king's assistance, took Valenciennes, then 



438 LOUIS XIV. 

Cambrai, and, with Monsieur, gained tlie victory of Cassel 
over the Prince of Orange. Ghent opened her gates the 
following year. 

Defection of England (1678). — An unforeseen event 
decided Louis to make peace. The English viewed with 
anxiety the progress of his influence on the continent, and 
particularly the development of his navy ; they were mur- 
muring against their own king, bound by alliance to this 
formidable neighbor ; the national opposition became every 
day more active in Parliament. After 1674 Charles II. had 
ceased to act against the Dutch ; in 1678 he was forced to 
unite with them, to consent to the ma^rriage of his niece 
Mary with the stadtholder, and to declare himself against 
France. 

Treaty of Nymwegen (1678) ; General Pacification (1679). 
— Thereupon Louis XIV. made proposals of peace to the 
United Provinces. The Prince of Orange tried to break up 
the negotiations by surprising, at St. Denis, Marshal Lux- 
embourg, who was confiding in an armistice ; but he was re- 
pulsed after a desperate engagement of six hours. 

The Netherlands, England, Spain, and the emperor 
negotiated with Louis at Nymwegen, the elector of Branden- 
burg at Saint-G-ermain, the king of Denmark at Fontaine- 
bleau (August, 1678-September, 1679). Again it was Spain 
which paid the costs of the war ; she abandoned Franche- 
Comte, and, in the Netherlands, gave up the last tAvo cities 
of Artois, with twelve other places, — Valenciennes, Cambrai, 
etc., — which Vauban immediately covered with fortifications 
so as to make them a barrier for France. But deviating 
from the commercial policy of Colbert, France conceded to 
the Dutch the abolition of the tariff of 1667, much to 
the injury of the merchant marine, as well as of French 
industries. 

The treaty of Nymwegen marks the zenith of the reign of 
Louis XIV. ; only a short time after, the magistrates of 
Paris conferred upon him the title of the Great. But suc- 
cessful as this war had been, it was nevertheless the origin 
of the misfortunes of the latter part of the reign ; for it had 
accustomed Europe to league together against France, and 
had pointed out the man whom she should take for chief of 
her councils, and the country which should be the mainstay 
of resistance. The war with the Netherlands prepared the 
future greatness of William III. and England. If Louis 



LOUIS XIV. 439 

XIV. had continued the ally of the Dutch, a great navy 
would have been united to that of France, to contend with 
the English for the control of the ocean. When, on the 
contrary, the United Provinces had joined forces with 
Great Britain, France had, instead of an adversary within 
reach, an enemy with whom she could never quite grapple. 



440 LOUIS XIV. 



CHAPTER LII. 

THE LAST PART OF THE REIGN OP LOUIS XIV. 
(1679-1715 A.D.) 

Conquests of Louis XIV. in Time of Peace; Reunion of 
Strassbur.g to France. — After the treaty of Nymwegen the 
nations disbanded their troops. Louis retained his, and 
made the peace a time of conquest. The last treaties had 
delivered over to him a certain number of cities and can- 
tons, with their dependencies. In order to find out what 
these dependencies were, he established at Tournai, Metz, 
Breisach, and Besan9on commissions called chambers of re- 
union, because appointed for the purpose of reuniting to 
France lands claimed as having been cut off from the cities 
of Flanders, from the Trois-Evech6s, Alsace, and Franche- 
Conit^. Decisions sustained by force gave Louis XIV. 
twenty important cities, Saarbrticken, Zweibriicken, Luxem- 
burg, and Strassburg, which Vauban made the bulwark of 
the kingdom on the Rhine (1681). In Italy, Louis bought 
Casale from the Duke of Mantua, in order to control the 
northern part of the Peninsula. 

Bombardment of Algiers and Genoa. — The Barbary pi- 
rates had recommenced their attacks. Old Duquesne was 
sent against them, Algiers was bombarded twice (1681- 
1683), destroyed in part, and obliged to give up her prison- 
ers. Tunis and Tripoli experienced the same fate; the 
Mediterranean was for a time freed from privateers. The 
Genoese had sold arms and ammunition to the Algerines, 
and were building four ships of war for Spain. Louis for- 
bade their arming these galleys ; on their refusing, Duquesne 
and Seignelay bombarded the city (1684). The doge was 
obliged to come to Versailles to ask pardon of the king, in 
spite of an ancient law which ordered that the chief magis- 
trate should never leave the city. 

The Pope, even, was again humiliated. The Catholic am- 
bassadors at Rome had extended the right of asylum, claimed 
for their h6tels, to the whole quarter in which they lived. 



'!/ 





par /•'. OooiHfi^ 



LOUIS XIV. 441 

Innocent XI. endeavored to put an end to tliis abuse, which 
made one-half of the city a refuge for criminals ; but Louis 
XIV. sent troops to maintain his ambassador in the posses- 
sion of an unjust privilege ; the Pope excommunicated the 
ambassador; the king seized Avignon (1687). This affair 
was not without its influence on the war of 1688. The 
French candidate for the archiepiscopal chair at Cologne, 
the cardinal of Fiirstenberg, had been elected by the major- 
ity of the chapter. Innocent XI. nevertheless gave the in- 
vestiture to his competitor, Clement of Bavaria. Louis 
protested against this nomination and sent troops to occupy 
Bonn, ISTeuss, and Kaiserswerth (October, 1688). At the 
same time he claimed a part of the Palatinate in the name 
of his sister-in-law, the second wife of the Duke of Orleans. 

League of Augsburg (1686). — These conquests, made in 
time of peace, these outrages, and the overbearing conduct 
of Louis aroused the fears of Europe. In 1681 the empire, 
the emperor Leopold, Spain, the Netherlands, and even 
Sweden, had concluded, under the influence of William of- 
Orange, a secret alliance for the maintenance of the peace 
of Nymwegen. Seeing that the ambition of Louis XIV. 
knew no bounds, they allied themselves more closely, and 
signed the League of Augsburg (1688) : Savoy acceded to 
it in the following year; England, in 1689. 

Internal Condition of France; Death of Colbert (1683). — 
What was the situation of France at this critical moment ? 
A sort of fatigue began to be felt in that society, still so 
brilliant and apparently so pros]3erous. The enormous 
expenses of the late war, the great cost of the maintenance 
of an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men in time 
of peace, the constructions, whether for luxury or for utility, 
had destroyed the eqviilibrium of the finances, forced an 
increase of taxation, and dealt a great blow at agriculture 
and commerce. The frightful miseries of 1662 reappeared. 

In vain Colbert preached economy ; the abyss of the 
deficit continued to enlarge. Colbert exhausted his ingenuity 
in finding means to fill it up. He groaned at having to put 
back the finances into the condition in which he had found 
them, and to see foreign competition once more crush out 
French commerce and industry. He was overcome by these 
troubles, and died in 1683, at the age of sixty years, worn 
out by excessive labors, and killed, perhaps, by the unjust 
reproaches of the king. Colbert, like some other great 



442 LOUIS XIY. 

Frencli ministers, was unpopular. The people cursed the 
man who wrote out edicts for extraordinary taxation, not 
the man who dictated them. It was found necessary to 
bury at night, under guard, one of the benefactors of France, 
in order to prevent his funeral procession from being in- 
sulted by the populace. After his death, his ministry was 
divided : the Marquis of Seignelay, his son, had the depart- 
ment of marine ; the finances were assigned to Le Pelletier, 
and afterwards to Pontchartrain, 

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). — It was two 
years after the death of Colbert that Louis XIV. committed 
the greatest mistake of his reign, by revoking the edict of 
Nantes. The Protestants had not stirred during the dis- 
turbances of the Fronde. Yet vexatious measures against 
them were multiplied. Louis hated them for their heresy, 
and because he suspected that they had little liking for 
absolute monarchy. Eeligious unity seemed to him as 
necessary as political unity. For a long time he refrained 
from persecuting them, but took care to construe their 
rights with the most narrow strictness. Colbert did better; 
he protected the Protestants as useful and industrious sub- 
jects. He employed many of them in the arts, in manu- 
factures, and in the naval service. Duquesne, the great 
admiral, and Van Eobais, the great manufacturer of Abbe- 
ville, were Protestants. 

After the treaty of Nymwegen the different influences 
which were brought to bear upon Louis XIV., then growing 
old, drove the government to harsh measures. The king 
had, at that time, sharp contests with the Holy See, on the 
subject of the regale, and had induced the clergy of France 
to take his part by the celebrated declaration of 1682, which 
Bossuet drew up. But he did not wish that his religious 
zeal should be doubted, and in order to give a strong proof 
of it, which should, at the same time, be of use to himself, 
he yielded to the earnest persuasions of the Church with 
regard to the Protestants. The securities which the edict 
of Nantes had assured to them were taken away by the 
suppression of the half-Protestant chambers in the parlia- 
ments of Toulouse, Grenoble, and Bordeaux, as were, also, 
all the liberties granted them by Richelieu and Mazarin: 
they were forbidden, successively, to act as notaries, solic- 
itors, advocates, experts, printers, booksellers, physicians, 
surgeons, or even apothecaries. Thus they were compelled, 



LOUIS xir. 443 

driven as they were from all the ]3ublic offices and liberal 
professions, to devote themselves to commerce and industry, 
which they monopolized almost entirely. Catholics were 
forbidden to embrace Calvinism, while the children of Prot- 
estants were allowed to renounce their religion at the age 
of seven years. Missions were multiplied in the provinces ; 
consciences were bought by payments of money. Louvois 
resorted to still more persuasive means. He quartered 
soldiers in the houses of the Calvinists. These missionarits 
in jackboots committed the greatest excesses. As the dra- 
goons were especially noted for acts of violence, these meas- 
ures were called the dragonnades. 

Finally, the last blow was struck ; on October 22, 1685, 
an edict revoked that of Nantes. It suppressed all the 
privileges granted by Henry IV. and Louis XIII. ; deprived 
Protestants of the public exercise of their worship, except 
in Alsace; ordered the ministers to leave the kingdom 
within a fortnight, and forbade the others to follow them, 
under pain of the galleys and confiscation of their property. 
Terrible consequences ensued ; the Protestants had no longer 
any civil rights, their marriages were regarded as null, 
their children as bastards. The property of all those who 
were proved heretics was confiscated, and a great number of 
ministers were executed. 

This disastrous and criminal measure was hailed with 
gratitude by a great part of the nation. Vauban, Saint 
Simon, Catinat, and a few superior minds alone compre- 
hended the evil which had been done to the country. Mad- 
ame de S6vigu6 wrote in a letter : " Nothing could be finer ; 
no king ever did, or ever will do, anything so memorable." 
The old chancellor Le Tellier, then dying, rallied suffi- 
ciently upon signing the edict to cry out : N'unc dimitte ser- 
vum, Domine, quia viderunt ocidi mei salutare tuum ! He did 
not see that he was sanctioning one of the greatest misfor- 
tunes of Prance. Two hundred and fifty or three hundred 
thousand Protestants crossed the frontier in the last years 
of the seventeenth century, in spite of the king's police, 
and carried to foreign lands the French arts, the secrets of 
French manufactures, and hatred of their king. Entire 
regiments of Calvinists were formed in the Netherlands, in 
England, and in Germany; those who remained in the king- 
dom only awaited an opportunity to throw off the yoke. 
Marshal Schomberg left the country ; the aged Duquesne, 



444 LOUIS XIV. 

vainly pressed by Lonis XIV. to abjure, was permitted to 
die ill France. 

There were, in 1685, a million Calvinists in France ; there 
are at the present day, fifteen or eighteen hundred thousand. 
And who can estimate the effect which this great persecu- 
tion had upon the sceptical philosophy of the eighteenth 
century ! At the moment, it caused the outburst of a ter- 
rible'war against France, which inaugurated the period of 
reverses. 

The Revolution in England (1688). — The response of the 
Protestant powers to the revocation of the Edict was the 
English revolution, which, in 1688, drove James II. from the 
throne, and placed the Calvinist, William III., in his place. 
Twice did Louis XIV. make the fortune of his most formid- 
able adversary: in 1672, when by an unjust war he rendered 
William of Orange necessary to the Netherlands ; in 1688, 
when, by his close alliance with a king odious to his sub- 
jects, he secured popularity in England for this rough and 
ungracious prince, who spoke English with difB-Culty and 
cared much more for the affairs of the continent than those 
of Great Britain. The revolution which gave him the throne 
of James II. effected more than simply a change of royal 
personages. It substituted royalty by consent for royalty 
by divine right, and established constitutional or parlia- 
mentary government. A new right, that of the people, 
arose in modern society, in opposition to the absolute right 
of kings, which for two centuries had ruled over it, and 
which had just realized its most glorious impersonation in 
France. The desperate struggle which broke out between 
France and England is, therefore, not to be wondered at. 
There were not only two contrary interests, but two differ- 
ent political rights struggling for the mastery. England 
became the centre of all the coalitions against the house of 
Bourbon, as France had been the centre of resistance to the 
house of Austria. This political change reversed all the 
conditions of the war. England having joined the enemies 
of France, it was necessary to maintain not only armies on 
the Scheldt, the Rhine, and the Alps, but also fleets on the 
ocean and in the most distant seas. It was this twofold 
effort which exhausted France. 

War of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697). — The 
coalition declared war February 5, 1689. Louis had, 
ready to oppose it; 350,000 soldiers and 264 vessels or 



LOUIS XIV. 445 

frigates. He adopted a plan both simple and courageous. 
The soul of the coalition was William of Orange ; Louis 
XIV. gave James II. a fleet to assist him regaining his 
throne. Spain and Savoy Avere the weakest states of the 
League; he turned against them the greater part of his 
forces, while maintaining the defensive on the Rhine. 
Louis had, moreover, skilful captains, Luxembourg, Catinat, 
Boufflers, and Tourville. 

Attempts to Re-establish James II. ; Tourville. — The war 
in behalf of James II. was at first successful. A squadron 
conveyed the prince to Ireland (May, 1689). Convoys of 
troops, arms, and ammunition also set out. England and 
the Dutch endeavored to stop their passage ; Tourville with 
seventy-eight ships attacked their fleet off Beachy Head, 
and gained a brilliant victory (July, 1690) which gave 
Louis XIV., for a time, the empire of the ocean. But James 
lost precious time at the siege of Londonderry. William 
attacked him at the Boyne (July, 1690). The Irish fled with 
their king at the first attack, and the French alone offered 
any resistance. James was obliged to return to France. 

Louis XIV. then prepared for a descent upon England 
herself. Twenty thousand men were assembled between 
Cherbourg and La Hogue ; three hundred transports were 
held in readiness at Brest. The king ordered Tourville 
with forty-six ships to encounter the enemy's fleet of ninety- 
nine sails. The result was the battle of La Hogue (1692). 
Tourville stood his ground manfully for ten hours against 
the Anglo-Dutch, and would have made at least a glorious 
retreat if he had had a port behind him : seven of his ves- 
sels reached Brest ; twenty-two passed through the Race of 
Alderney and entered Saint-Malo ; three stopped at Cher- 
bourg, where they were burned ; and twelve took refuge in 
the harbor of La Hogue. Tourville removed the cannons, 
ammunition, and rigging from them, and at the approach of 
the English, the hulls of his ships were set on fire. This 
was the first blow given to the military marine of France ; 
the re-establishment of the Stuarts in England became 
impossible. 

Defensive War on the Rhine ; Burning of the Palatinate 
(1689). — In 1688 the dauphin entered Germany with eighty 
thousand men, and Marshal Duras as adviser. Philipps- 
burg, Mannheim, Worms, Oberwesel, were taken in a few 
weeks. It was not the desiarn of the French minister to 



446 LOUIS XIV. 

retain them; the Palatinate was burned again, this time 
with great cruelty (1689) . Speyer was completely destroyed. 
The French sacked the magnificent castle of Heidelberg; 
one hundred thousand inhabitants, driven from their country 
by the flames, went about tlirough Germany demanding ven- 
geance. The king himself regretted these horrible execu- 
tions, and his dissatisfaction might have been the prelude of 
a disgrace, had not Louvois died (1691). He was succeeded 
by his son Barbezieux, who had none of his qualities. The 
Duke of Lorges, the successor of Duras, contented himself 
with protecting Alsace from the imperial forces, who could 
not subsist in the Palatinate. The war then remained 
defensive on the Khine ; the great blows were struck else- 
where. 

War in Savoy and Piedmont ; Catinat. — The commander 
in Italy was Catinat, a man of humble birth, who had risen 
to his position by his own merit. In order to bring the 
Duke of Savoy to a decisive engagement before the arrival 
of the German troops, he devastated the country districts of 
Piedmont. Victor Amadeus fought the battle of Staffarda 
(1690), and lost four thousand men ; while the French had 
only five hundred killed and won Savoy, Nice, and the 
greater part of Piedmont. But a relative of the' duke. 
Prince Eugene, whose services Louis XIV. had refused, 
and who had then offered them to Austria, arrived with 
powerful re-enforcements, and invaded Prance. Dauphiny 
suffered cruel retaliation for the burning of the Palatinate 
and the ravaging of Piechnont (1692). Catinat, however, re- 
crossed the Alps ; a second battle took place near Marsaglia 
(1693), and was as disastrous for Victor Amadeus as the 
previous one ; little Avas now left him but Turin, and 
Catinat would have taken that if the war minister had not 
reduced his forces. 

War in the Netherlands ; Luxembourg. — Luxembourg 
had served, at first, under the great Conde, whom he greatly 
resembled in bravery and quickness of insight. In 1690 
he encountered the Prince of Waldeck near Fleurus, killed 
six thousand of his men, and carried off a hundred stan- 
dards, his cannon, baggage, and eight thousand prisoners. 
Master of the open county, he invested Mons ; Louis XIV. 
was present at the siege. William, having got rid of James 
II., hastened over Avith eighty thousand men, but could not 
prevent the surrender of the city (A^Dril, 1691). The fol- 



LOUIS XIV. 447 

lowing year Luxembourg besieged Namur, the strongest 
position in the Netherlands, at the confluence of the Sambre 
and the Meuse, and took it again, under the eyes of Louis 
XIV. and the enemy's army (June, 1692). This was one 
of the great sieges of the century. Vauban conducted it, 
and the operation is regarded as a model. Vauban's rival, 
Coehorn, defended the place. 

But William, though always defeated, never grew weary. 
In August, 1692, he surprised Luxembourg at Steenkerk, in 
Hainault. Luxembourg was ill; the danger restored his 
strength ; it was necessary that he should work wonders to 
save himself from defeat, and he did. A famous event of 
the battle was the charge made by four young princes of 
the blood, Philip of Orleans, Louis of Bourbon (grandson 
of Cond^), the Prince of Conti, and the Duke of Venddme, 
"at the head of the king's household troops, for the purpose 
of driving off a body of English, who were holding an impor- 
tant post upon which the success of the battle depended. 
The carnage was terrible ; the > Prench finally carried the 
day. The regiment of Champagne defeated King William's 
guards ; and when the English were overcome, the rest were 
obliged to give up. . . . 

" William, having lost about seven thousand men, retired, 
in as good order as when he led the attack. The victory, 
due to the valor of all these young princes and the flower 
of the nobility, created, at the court, at Paris, and in the 
provinces, an effect produced by no battle which had ever 
before been won" (Voltaire). 

The next year William of Orange ventured near Louvain 
with only fifty thousand men. Louis was in the vicinity 
with more than one hundred thousand; the whole army 
expected that a great blow was to be struck, bxit in spite of 
the supplications of Luxembourg, who, it is said, threw 
himself on his knees before him, the king declared the 
campaign finished, and returned to Versailles. Prom that 
day forth he never appeared with the army. His reputa- 
tion abroad suffered much in consequence ; yet, in fact, he 
did not lack personal courage. 

The victories of Pleurus and Steenkerk had given Luxem- 
bourg Hainault and the province of Namur ; he forced his 
way into Southern Brabant; but he found William III. 
again in front of him, strongly entrenched, at Neerwinden 
(July, 1693). Pew battles have been more murderous; 



448 LOUIS XIV. 

ISTeerwinclen was twice carried by the infantry, which, for 
the first time, resolutely made a bayonet charge. About 
twenty thousand were killed, of whom twelve thousand 
were on the side of the allies. After this success, the 
Prench might, perhaps, have marched on Brussels and dic- 
tated peace, but they contented themselves with besieging 
and taking Charleroi. The victory of Neerwinden was the 
last of Luxembourg's triumphs. The following campaign 
was marked by no unusual occurrence, and he died in Jan- 
uary, 1695. His successor, the Duke of Villeroi, was inca- 
pable of doing anything remarkable, even with an army of 
eighty thousand men ; he did not even prevent the Prince 
of Orange from taking Namur (August, 1695). But in 
Spain, Venddme entered Barcelona (August, 1695), after a 
memorable siege. 

On the sea, Tourville had, in 1693, avenged the disaster 
of La Hogue by a victory in the bay of Lagos, near Cape 
St. Vincent. In the following years extensive armaments 
were suspended, but privateers preyed upon the commerce 
of the English and Dutch, who, in revenge, made several 
attempts to land on the French coast. In America, Count 
Frontenac bravely defended Canada, taking the offensive on 
all sides, although the province had only eleven or twelve 
thousand inhabitants, and the English colonies had ten 
times as many. 

Treaty of Ryswyk (1697). — But the war was now lan- 
guishing; every one was exhausted. Louis proposed peace; 
Charles II. of Spain was almost dying ; he would leave no 
child, and the question of the Spanish succession was at 
last about to be thrown open. It was important that the 
king should dissolve the European coalition before this 
great event occurred. He evinced unusual moderation. His 
first act was to detach the Duke of Savoy from the League 
(1696). The defection of Victor Amadeus decided the 
others, and peace was signed at Eyswyk, near the Hague 
(October, 1697). Louis XIV. recognized William III. as 
lawful sovereign of England and Ireland. He restored his 
recent conquests in the Netherlands, in the Empire, and in 
Spain, with the exception of Strassburg, Landau, Longwy, 
and Saarlouis. He permitted the Dutch to garrison the 
most important places in Flanders, which the Spaniards 
seemed to be incapable of defending against him. He 
restored Lorraine, and abolished the tonnage duty of fifty 



LOUIS XIV. 449 

sous per ton, thus completely abandoning the commercial 
policy of Colbert. These concessions, which were extremely 
wounding to the king's pride, were greatly censured ; but 
Louis hoped to repair the loss of a few cities by the acqui- 
sition of an empire. 

Accession of a French Prince to the Throne of Spain (1700). 
— Charles II. lingered three years more. To whom should 
his immense inheritance revert ? The two houses of France 
and Austria, allied by marriage to that of Spain, each laid 
claim to it.^ For Louis XIV. or Leopold to reign at Madrid 
would be the destruction of the balance of power in Europe. 
William III. proposed to Louis that they should divide the 
succession in advance, and two Partition Treaties were signed 
at the Hague. The first (1698) assigned the Spanish mon- 
archy to the Prince of Bavaria, the Milanese to the Archduke 
Charles, second son of the emperor, the Two Sicilies, a few 
Tuscan ports, and Guipuzcoa, gifts useless or dangerous, to the 
dauphin. A second treaty, after the death of the electoral 
prince of Bavaria, gave Spain to the archduke, and increased 
the French portion by the addition of Lorraine, a province 
which would fall into the hands of France at the first can- 
non shot (1700) . This was no compensation for the danger 
of seeing an Austrian reigning in Brussels and Madrid. 

These treaties had in the end no effect. The dying king 
was deeply indignant that ]3roposals for the dismemberment 
of his monarchy should be made during his lifetime and 
without consulting him. In order to maintain the integrity 
of his states, he must bequeath them all either to Austria 
or to France. Austria was ill served by her ambassador at 
Madrid ; France, on the contrary, had a skilful servant there. 
Charles II., by his last will and testament, called to the 
throne Philip, Duke of Anjou, second son of the dauphin 
(November 2, 1700). Twent3^-eight days after he died. 

1 Louis XIV. and the Emperor Leopold, each the son of an infanta 
of Spain, had each also married an infanta. But Anne of Austria and 
Maria Theresa, who married into the house of France, were elder sisters 
of Maria Anna and Margaret Theresa, who married into the house of 
Austria. The son and grandson of Louis XIV. had therefore superior 
claims to those of Leopold, son of Maria Anna, and to those of the 
electoral prince of Bavaria, Ferdinand Joseph, grandson of Margaret 
Theresa. Leopold lield up, as an objection, the renunciation of Maria 
Theresa, but the Spanish cortes had not been summoned in order to 
sanction it, and it was invalid from another point of view, the dowry of 
the infanta not having been paid. 



450 LOUIS XIV. 

Should Louis XIV. accept the testament or abide by the 
last treaty of the Hague ? An extraordinary council was 
assembled ; it was composed of only four persons besides the 
king, — the dauphin, the Duke of Beauvilliers, governor of 
the children of the house of France, Chancellor Pontchart- 
rain, and the Marquis of Torcy, minister of foreign affairs. 
The latter was a nephew of the great Colbert, an exceedingly 
able and honest man. Various opinions were expressed, but 
Torcy justly remarked that war would ensue, no matter 
what decision was made. "It is better to fight for the 
whole," said he, " than for a part." Louis XIV. was silent, 
and for three days his determination was not known. He 
finally announced his consent to the Duke of Anjou, and 
presented him to the court with these words, " Gentlemen, 
the king of Spain." A few weeks later Philip V. set out 
for Madrid. 

Third Coalition against France (1701-1713) ; Grand Alli- 
ance of the Hague. — Neither England nor the United Prov- 
inces wished to see the French in possession of the Spanish 
Netherlands. Great prudence and good management were 
requisite. The king, unfortunately, revealed his designs too 
quickly, and defied Europe with surprising levity. In spite 
of the formal clauses of the will of Charles II. he did not 
require Philip V. to make renunciation of the throne of 
France ; thus alarming Europe with the thoaght of seeing 
France and Spain governed some day by the same king. A 
little later he drove the Dutch from the fortresses which 
they occupied in the Netherlands by virtue of the treaty of 
Ryswyk, and replaced them by French garrisons. Finally, 
upon the death of James II., he recognized his son, the Prince 
of Wales, as king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, against 
the advice of all his ministers. This insult offered to the 
English people and to William III. rendered war inevitable, 

A third coalition was formed, known as the Grand Alli- 
ance of the Hague (September, 1701), entered into by Eng- 
land, the Netherlands, Austria, the Empire, and a little 
later by Portugal. Louis XIV. had now no allies in all 
Europe, except the Elector of Bavaria and the dukes of 
Modena and Savoy. Spain took the part of the French, but 
had neither soldiers nor money nor vessels.. William III. 
died in the month of March, 1702, but his policy survived 
him because it was national. Under his sister-in-law. Queen 
Anne, England continued to defend her threatened political 
and religious liberties and her commercial prosperity. 



LOUIS XIV. 451 

Marlborough ; Prince Eugene ; Heinsius. — Three cele- 
brated men, Heinsius, Marlborough, and Prince Eugene, 
acting in the strictest unity, replaced the chief whom the 
league had just lost. Heinsius was grand pensioner of 
Holland, and directed the republic with the authority of a 
monarch. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, governed 
Queen Anne through his wife, the Parliament through his 
friends, the ministry through his son-in-law Sunderland, 
secretary of State, and the lord treasurer Godolphin, father- 
in-law of one of his daughters. Prince Eugene, born in 
France in 1663, son of a niece of Mazarin, belonged to the 
house of Savoy. He was destined for the ecclesiastical 
profession, but preferred that of arms, and at nineteen 
years of age asked Louis XIV. for a regiment. Louis re- 
fused to make a colonel of the " Savoyard abbe." Austria 
received him more favorably, and sent him into Italy to 
fight against Catinat. After the peace of E-yswyk he fought 
victoriously against the Turks and was then appointed pres- 
ident of the council of war. By the good understanding 
which he maintained with Marlborough he gave to the 
European coalition the union it had always needed. 

Situation of France. — In order to triumph over so for- 
midable adversaries Prance needed the great men of the 
preceding generation, but they were gone ; she was begin- 
ning to be exhausted ; the soldiers were lacking as well as 
the generals and ministers. The incompetent Chamillard 
succumbed under the double burden of finances and the 
war. The king undertook to direct him, and never, in fact, 
did he show more activity, devising plans and regulating 
the execution from his cabinet. But in truth he carried 
supervision too far. 

First Campaigns in Germany, in Italy, and in the Nether- 
lands (1701-1704). — It was the opinion of Louis XIV. 
that the war should be defensive on all sides except that 
toward Germany. Boufflers was sent to the ISTetherlands 
to oppose Marlborough, who commanded the English and 
Dutch army ; Catinat to Italy, to keep Prince Eugene and 
the imperials out of the Milanese; Villars to Germany, to 
join the elector And march upon Vienna. For three years 
(1701-1704) the success of the two parties was equal. 
But in 1702 Marlborough forced his way into the Southern 
Netherlands in spite of the opposition of Boufilers. In 
1701 Prince Eugene descended into Lombardy, in spite of 



452 LOUIS XIV. 






Catinat. The court displaced the latter and gave his army 
to Villeroi. 
Villeroi ; Befeat of Chiari (1701) ; Surprise of Cremona 

(1702). — This proteg6 of Madame de Maintenon was a 
good courtier, but an execrable general. From the moment 
of his arrival he took the offensive, scorning the advice 
of Catinat, who had^ consented to serve under him. He 
crossed the Oglio, hoping to su.rprise Eugene at Chiari, but 
was himself surprised and defeated. Villeroi then took up 
his quarters at Cremona. Eugene, in the dead of winter, 
attempted a surprise upon Cremona, and nearly succeeded. 
The enemy, after reaching the very heart of the city, was 
driven out of the gates, but carried off the marshal. Ven- 
ddme took his place. 

Victories of Vendome at Luzzara, of Villars at Friedlingen 
and at Hbchstadt, of Tallard at Speyer (1702-1703). —This 
grandson of Henry IV. was a strange general ; his morals 
were more than doubtful, and he never rose till four o'clock 
in the afternoon ; but on the field of battle he showed quick- 
ness, cheerfulness, and fiery courage; often surprised, but 
never overcome, he carried on a successful war for two years 
against the Imperialists. He delivered Mantua, captured 
their magazines at Luzzara (1702), and was then able to 
approach the Tyrol. At this moment he was forced to re- 
treat by the open defection of the Duke of Savoy. He 
seized upon the greater part of Piedmont and threatened 
Turin, but he made no more demonstrations agaiiist Austria. 

There was the same success in Germany. Catinat, called 
to the Rhine, had not re-established there the reputation 
which he had compromised in Italy ; but one of his lieuten- 
ants, Villars, attacked the Prince of Baden in the Black 
Forest, near Friedlingen, and won his marshal's baton on 
the field of battle (1702). The following year he drove 
back the Prince of Baden upon the lines of Stollhofen, and 
affected a junction with the Elector of Bavaria, who had 
also just beaten the Austrians (May, 1703). The road to 
Vienna was now open. Villars desired to hasten thither ; 
but another plan was adopted, and failed to succeed. The 
French and Bavarians entered Innsbruck, while Venddme 
was bombarding Trent. The defection of the Duke of Savoy 
recalled Venddme from the Tyrol, and the elector and Vil- 
lars had to abandon Innsbruck. They took their revenge 
upon the Count of Styrum, who was completely beaten in 



LOUIS XIV. 453 

the plains of Hochstadt (1703). Two months later the 
Imperialists experienced near Speyer a bloody defeat at the 
hands of Tallard. 

The Camisards. — This victory was the end of the tri- 
umphs of France. Villars, unable to agree with the elector, 
demanded his recall. Louis XIV. sent him against the Prot- 
estant rebels in the Cevennes, the Camisards. These unfortu- 
nate people, severely persecuted, accepted the aid of England 
and the Duke of Savoy, eager to keep up a civil war in the 
heart of France, and in their turn avenged themselves by 
cruel deeds. Yillars was deej^ly interested in saving this 
province and bringing back these exasperated men, and soon 
re-established peace in the region. But a hundred thousand 
people had perished in this terrible war, and meantime 
Marsin was losing Germany. 

Battle of Hochstadt or Blenheim ; Loss of Germany 
(1704) . — Marlborough and Prince Eugene had conceived 
a bold and clever plan to save Austria, which had become 
exposed to attack by the taking of Passau in January, 1704. 
They united their forces in Bavaria. Tallard and Marsin 
had rejoined the elector. They met the enemy near Hoch- 
stadt. Their positions were badly chosen ; Marlborough 
easily broke their lines and took prisoner Tallard and an 
entire corps which had not been in the fight. In less than 
a month Bavaria was subjugated ; the elector fled to Brus- 
sels, and the Imperialists reajjpeared on the Ehine. It was 
necessary to recall Villars in order to save Alsace. 

Battles of Ramillies and Turin (1706) ; Loss of Italy and 
the Netherlands. — The Empire was saved. Eugene and 
Marlborough separated ; one went to Italy, the other to the 
jS"etherlands. The plans of the European coalition were 
ably developed under the direction of these two great gen- 
erals. They intended to conquer all the outside provinces 
of the Spanish monarchy before attacking France herself. 

Marlborough found conquest easy. He again had as his 
opponent the incompetent Villeroi. He penetrated to the 
very heart of Brabant, and found Villeroi at Ramillies. 
Villeroi chose the most unfortunate positions. Marlborough 
quickly recognized his mistakes, and inflicted on him an 
overwhelming defeat (May, 1706). When Villeroi reap- 
peared at court, the king contented himself with saying to 
him, "Monsieur le mar^chal, at our age one is no longer 
fortunate." The loss of the greater part of Brabant was 



454 LOUIS XIV. 

the result of this defeat, which cost France five thousand 
killed and wounded and fifteen thousand prisoners. Marl- 
borough entered Antwerp, Brussels, and Ostend ; and Louis 
XIV. was obliged, in order to arrest his progress, to recall 
the Duke of Venddme from Italy., where he was covering 
the siege of Turin. 

While Venddme was hastening to Flanders, Eugene con- 
ceived the bold project of going to assist Turin by ascend- 
ing to the right bank of the Po. He had to cross fifteen 
rivers, tc fight or avoid the army of observation, to conquer 
the besieging army, and all this with weary troops inferior 
in numbers. But the incapable Marsin, who had been placed 
in command of the army of Italy, failed to stop him. The 
French lines before Turin, being spread out too extensively, 
were broken through (September, 1706), the marshal mor- 
tally wounded. Piedmont delivered, the Milanese lost, and, 
as a result, in the following year, the kingdom of Naples. 
Prince Eugene and the Duke of Savoy, astonished at the 
consequences of a victory which brought them to the con- 
fines of France, could not resist the temptation to enter. 
They invaded Provence, and besieged Toulon, sustained by 
an English fleet. The city was bravely defended. Eugene 
lost ten thousand men in the attack and retreat (1707). 
Attacks upon this frontier have always been, and must con- 
tinue to be, on account of the nature of the country, fatal 
to those who make them. 

Reverses in Spain (1704-1708).— In 1703 the English 
had brought Portugal into the coalition. In 1704 they 
surprised and took the impregnable fortress of Gibraltar, 
the key of the Mediterranean. The Archduke Charles, the 
competitor of Philip V., had, in the mean time, landed in 
Catalonia with nine thousand soldiers. In 1705 he took 
Barcelona. Aragon and the neighboring provinces submitted 
to him. The following year he entered Madrid. The 
English took Cartagena, the Portuguese Ciudad-Eodrigo ; 
and an Anglo-Portuguese army occupied Estremadura. It 
was immediately proposed in the councils of Louis XIV. 
to renounce Spain, and send Philip V. to reign in America. 

Success of Villars on the Rhine (1705-1707). —Mean- 
while Villars had kept his word. In 1705 he had arrested 
the progress of Marlborough, and covered Lorraine. In the 
following year and in 1707 he gained other successes in 
South Germany. Thus the coalition, though victorious at 



LOUIS XIV. 455 

the two extremities of the immense line of operations in 
Spain, in Italy, and in the Netherlands, was beaten in the 
centre, on the Ehine. At the same time Charles XII. of 
Sweden appeared in Saxony at the head of an army until 
then invincible. Villars proposed to march across the 
Empire to join him, and Louis XIV. begged him to attack 
the coalition in the rear. Bvit instead he burst upon Russia, 
and was ruined there. 

Defeat of Oudenarde (1708) ; France itself entered. — 
Prince Eugene rejoined Marlborough in Flanders. Tlio 
allies had eighty thousand men; France, Avhom Europe 
believed to be exhausted, furnished a hundred thousand. 
Louis XIV. entrusted them to his grandson, the Duke of 
Burgundy, under whom Vend6me served as lieutenant. The 
division of the command led to a fresh disaster : the army 
was put to rout at Oudenarde (July, 1708). This was but 
an extensive picket fight ; and when evening came, nothing 
had been lost. Venddme proposed to begin the fight again 
the next day, but the Duke of Burgundy and his counsellors 
refused. The retreat was' disastrous ; the enemy killed or 
captured more than ten thousand men. Ghent, Bruges, and 
even Lille, capitulated; and France lay exposed to the 
allies. A party of Dutch went as far as the neighborhood 
of Versailles. 

France and Spain begin to recover ; Battles of Malpla- 
quet (1709) and Villaviciosa (1710). — The winter of 1709 
added to the misfortunes of the French. The cold was in- 
tense, and famine resulted. Louis XIV. humbled himself 
and asked for peace. But the triumvirs did not consider 
him sufiiciently humiliated. They required that he should 
restore Strassburg and renounce the sovereignty of Alsace, 
and should himself drive his grandson out of Spain. 
" Since I must make war," he replied, " I prefer to fight my 
enemies rather than my children," and he wrote a letter to 
the governors, bishops, and communes, calling upon them to 
be judges between him and his enemies. 

This noble appeal to patriotism moved all France ; again 
an army was raised, as large as that of the coalition. Villars 
was put in command of it. It was clearly shown at the 
battle of Malplaquet, near Mons (September, 1709), that the 
struggle had become a national one. The allies had almost 
one hundred and twenty thousand men ; the marshal, ninety 
thousand. When the action began, the soldiers, who had 



456 LOUIS XIV. 

had nothing to eat for a whole day, had just received their 
rations ; they threw them away in order to run more lightly 
to the fight. They were forced to retreat ; but the French 
had only eight thousand men disabled, and the allies twenty- 
one thousand. 

This glorious defeat announced the end of the French' 
reverses. Louis XIV. sent into Spain the Duke of Ven- 
ddme, who had been in disfavor since Oudenarde. His 
name alone was worth a whole army. The Spanish nation, 
like the French, awoke at the voice of Louis XIV. The 
people of the country districts began that guerilla warfare 
which, in the mountainous surface of Spain, has always 
been fatal to foreigners ; finally, the archduke's general, 
Count Stahremberg, was completely overthrown at Villavi- 
ciosa (December, 1710). This victory saved the crown of 
Philip V. 

Withdrawal of England (1711) ; Battle of Denain (1712). — 
This unexpected energy on the part of two nations, who 
were thought to be ready to give up, astonished the allies ; 
they were growing weary too, especially England, whose 
subsidies fed the coalition, and who had increased her pub- 
lic debt by £60,000,000. A court intrigue precipitated the 
change which public opinion, paramount in a free country, 
was already preparing, and which the queen herself desired. 
The Duchess of Marlborough, falling into disgrace with 
Queen Anne, brought down with her her husband's friends 
and, after a while, the duke himself. Bolingbroke and Ox- 
ford formed a new ministry, and the majority which they 
obtained in a newly elected House of Commons proved that 
the nation itself accepted the change which was about to 
take place in the foreign policy of England. 

Marlborough and his friends the Whigs owed their influ- 
ence to the war ; the Tories, the new advisers of the crown, 
sought to found their credit on the making of peace. Secret 
negotiations were entered into ; an unforeseen event soon 
made public negotiations possible. The emperor Joseph I., 
who had succeeded Leopold in 1705, died in 1711, leaving 
no heir but his brother, the Archduke Charles. England, 
who had fought to separate Spain and France, had no desire 
to continue the war for the purpose of uniting Spain to 
Austria. The preliminaries of peace were signed at Lon- 
don in October, 1711. The allies followed the example; a 
congress assembled at Utrecht in January, 1712. The em- 



LOUIS xir. 457 

peror and the empire refused to take part in it; but the 
combat had now become wholly unequal, and a single cam- 
paign sufficed to prove it. Prince Eugene was besieging 
Landrecies. He rightly called his lines " the road to Paris " ; 
for if Landrecies should fall, there was no fortress between 
Paris and his army. But the lines of the Imperialists were 
too extensive. Villars, making a feint on Landrecies, 
marched in all haste upon Denain. The camp was taken 
and seventeen battalions destroyed (July, 1712). Eugene 
hastened to re-enforce, but was repulsed; Landrecies was 
delivered, and the frontiers of France were placed in 
security. 

Maritime Expeditions ; Duguay-Trouin. — The necessity 
for keeping all the French forces on land in order to resist 
the armies of the continent had caused the navy to be neg- 
lected. England profited by this, and easily gained the 
empire of the seas, which France abandoned and which the 
Dutch could no longer retain. Henceforward there were 
only some encounters of squadrons, and soon the fighting 
was reduced to privateering. The French colonies, left 
without defence, were either devastated or conquered. 

Nevertheless, some of the French privateers and captains 
won for themselves great reputations. Duguay-Trouin, the 
son of a shipowner of St. Malo, gained great celebrity as a 
privateer ; he was made captain in the royal navy in 1706, 
and commanded an expedition against Eio Janeiro in which 
the vigor of the execution corresponded with the boldness 
of .the plan (1711). This place, which seemed impregnable, 
was carried after eleven days' siege. Many vessels and an 
immense quantity of merchandise were either taken or burned. 
Unhappily the exploits of these brave sailors had no influ- 
ence upon the war. 

Treaties of Utrecht, Rastadt, and Baden (1713-1714).— 
The victory of Denain hastened the conclusion of peace. 
There were three treaties : that of Utrecht (April 11, 1713), 
between France, Spain, England, the JSTetherlands, Savoy, 
and Portugal ; that of Eastadt (March 7, 1714), between 
France and the emperor; that of Baden (June 7, 1714), 
between France and the Empire. The treaty of Bastadt 
was retarded a year by the obstinacy of Charles VI., until 
the successes gained by Villars on the Bhine forced him to 
yield. 

By these treaties, Louis XIV. retained the earliest acqui- 



458 LOUIS XIV. 

sitions of his reign : Alsace, Artois, and Eoussillon, which 
France owed to Richelieu and Mazarin ; Flanders, Franche- 
Comt^, Strassburg, Saarlouis, Landau, and of the colonies, 
the Antilles, Cayenne, Bourbon, and Senegal; he acquired 
the valley of Barcelonette, but ceded to the Duke of Savoy 
Exilles, Fenestrelle, and Chateau-Dauphin; to England, 
Newfoundland, Hudson's Bay, and Acadia; he caused the 
port of Dunkirk to be dismantled and filled up ; he recog- 
nized the Protestant Elector of Brunswick, George I., as heir 
presumptive of Queen Anne, agreed to send the Pretender, 
James III., out of France, to release from prison all of his 
subjects who were confined for religious reasons, and not to 
receive from Spain any exclusive commercial privilege, while 
he granted to England important commercial advantages, 
and ceded to her the monopoly of the slave trade from the 
coast of Africa to the Spanish colonies. 

Philip V. retained Spain and her immense colonial posses- 
sions, but he renounced for himself and his children all 
pretensions to the throne of France ; he ceded to the Eng- 
lish Gibraltar and Minorca ; Sicily to the Duke of Savoy, 
and to the emjDeror the Southern Netherlands-, the Milanese, 
the kingdom of Naples, and Sardinia. The Duke of Bavaria, 
the unfortunate ally of Louis XIV., was re-established in his 
states. The title of King was bestowed upon the head of the 
house of Savoy. Finally, the Dutch obtained the right to 
garrison all the most important places in the Austrian Neth- 
erlands, in order to use them as a barrier against France. 

These conditions were honorable, if compared to the 
humiliating propositions of the triumvirs. France was 
saved by her perseverance, her united strength, and the 
energy of her king ; she came forth from this terrible trial 
weakened, but not humiliated, and with the honors of war. 
Two powers had gained especially by this war : Austria had 
won magnificent domains in Italy and the Netherlands ; 
England had seized ^^pon the empire of the seas. Besides, 
the one had reco veered Hungary, which was more necessary 
to her than Italy ; the other remained at Port Mahon, whence 
she could hold Toulon in check, and at Gibraltar, whence 
she threatened Spain and guarded the entrance to the Med- 
iterranean. But France gained the alliance of Spain. 

Numerous Deaths in the Royal Family (1712-1714). — 
The last years of the reign of Louis XIV. were as dark as 
the first had been brilliant. In addition to the national 



LOUIS XIV. 459 

misfortunes, tlie king had to bear terrible domestic afflic- 
tions : be lost bis only son, tbe daupbin (April, 1711) ; tbe 
Duke of Burgundy and bis wife (February, 1712) ; tbeir 
oldest son, tbe Duke of Brittany (Marcb) ; tbe Duke of 
Berry, son of tbe daupbin, in 1714. Tbus Louis XIV. bad 
left only bis grandson, Philip V., king of Spain, and his 
great-grandson, the Duke of Anjou, then only five years old, 
who was afterwards Louis XV. 

So many deaths happening in quick succession deter- 
mined tbe king to take an extraordinary measure : his 
legitimated sons, the Duke of Maine and the Count of Tou- 
louse, children of tbe Marchioness of Montespan, were 
declared heirs of the crown in default of princes of tbe 
blood. He appointed them, in bis will, members of a coun- 
cil of regency, composed principally of their friends, and 
of which the Duke of Orleans, his nephew, was to be merely 
the president; the Duke of Maine obtained, besides, tbe 
guardianship of tbe young king. This will was an unfor- 
tunate act. It fixed a slight on the Duke of Orleans, and 
organized war in tbe heart of the government itself. 

Death of the King (1715).— Louis XIV. died on Sep- 
tember 1st, 1715, at the age of seventy-seven years, after 
having reigned seventy-two. He left France excessively ex- 
hausted. The State was ruined, and seemed to have no 
resource but bankruptcy. This trouble seemed especially 
imminent in 1715, after tbe war, during which tbe govern- 
ment bad been obliged to borrow at four hundred per cent, 
to create new taxes, to spend in advance the revenue of 
two years, and to increase tbe public debt to 2400 millions. 

The acquisition of two provinces (Flanders, Franche- 
Comte) and a few cities (Strassburg, Landau, and Dunkirk) 
was no compensation for such terrible poverty. Succeeding 
generations have remembered only the numerous victories, 
Europe defied, France for twenty years preponderant, and 
tbe incomparable splendor of tbe court of Versailles, with 
its marvels of letters and arts, which have given to the 
seventeenth century tbe name of the age of Louis XIV. It 
is for history to show tbe price which France has paid for 
her king's vain attempts abroad to rule over Europe, and at 
home to enslave the wills and consciences of men. 



460 GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XIV. 



CHAPTER LIII. 

GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XIV. 

Consolidation of the Absolute Monarchy. — If the admin- 
istration of the kingdom was the work of the ministers of 
Louis XIV., as well as his own, one thing certainly belonged 
to him alone; namely, the general supervision which he 
gave to the government and to society, the energetic and 
skilful manner in which he dominated all powers, annulled 
them, or made them subservient to his grandeur. ' We have 
already seen his ideas as to the rights of sovereigns; he 
had summarized them in the speech which he is said to 
have made, young as he was, at the termination of the 
Fronde: "1 am the State." He believed it, all the world 
believed it also, and the Church taught it ; Bossuet founded 
the divine right of monarchy upon maxims drawn from the 
Holy Scriptures. While Louis XIV. lived, there was, in 
France, but one will without limitation or control, and that 
was his own. 

Suppression of States-General ; Provincial States and Elec- 
tive Mayoralties. — The States-General would have recalled 
the memory of other rights ; he never convened them ; he 
punished those who spoke of them. The greater part of 
the provinces had States of their own ; he suppressed many 
of them. Those which were retained were assembled only 
to execute the orders of the ministers. What remained of 
municipal liberties disappeared, as provincial liberties had 
done. An edict of 1683 placed the financial management 
of the cities in the hands of the intendants. Municipal life 
was then suspended, as had long been the case with politi- 
cal life ; an unfortunate condition of things, for practical 
education in public affairs was unknown in France, and 
when the day should come that she should be obliged to 
take the government from the failing hands of absolute 
royalty, she would find bold and powerful logicians to guide 
her, but no practical men of experience, who would under- 
stand how, by wise measures, to join the future to the past. 



GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XIV. 461 

Political liberty, to be lasting, must be built upon tlie strong 
basis of local liberties. It is thus that it has grown up in 
England, and thus it is maintained. 

Submission of Parliament. — In the sixteenth century the 
parliaments were called " the strong and powerful columns 
upon which monarchy rested." But in the seventeenth the 
new royalty desired no support but its own absolute right. 
But, thanks to the venality of offices, to the dignity of the 
lives of the magistrates, to the part they had sometimes 
played in politics, to their esprit de corps, there arose along- 
side of the feudal noblesse a noblesse de robe which was not 
always easily handled. Without openly breaking with the 
royal power, they resisted it by the aid of long proceedings 
and venerable forms. They turned aside attacks by that 
force of inertia which belongs to an assembly of old men, 
and which was hard to break down at a period when tra- 
dition made right. The spirit of opposition, driven out 
everywhere else, took refuge among them; faint political 
opposition in the Parliament of Paris, provincial opposition 
in the others, and in all religious opposition under the 
form of Jansenism. Louis XIV. saw this clearly, and dili- 
gently strove to transform the parliaments into simple 
courts of appeal, and make them subject to his Council of 
State. By an edict of 1667 he ordered the Parliament of 
Paris to register his ordinances within a week, and ivould 
allow no remonstrances. He caused the records of all delib- 
erations which dated from the civil war to be torn from 
their register, so as to efface even the remembrance of their 
ancient pretensions. He changed their title of sovereign 
court to that of superior court. 

Submission of the Nobility. — It seemed more difficult to 
reduce the nobles. Eichelieu had demolished their for- 
tresses and struck off the heads of the most troublesome 
among them ; Mazarin had bought them or conquered them 
by intrigue. Louis XIV. made himself master of them by 
attracting them to him by festivals, and by drawing them 
away from their own estates, where they thought too much 
of their ancestors and felt themselves still free, filling his 
antechambers and private offices with the descendants of 
those who had made his forefathers tremble, and thus gath- 
ering about ro3^alty that brilliant cortege l^y which the 
representative of God on earth wished to be always sur- 
rounded. The governors of provinces, despoiled of all 



462 GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XIV. 

authority for the benefit of the intendants, "could no 
longer play the king." They had no longer the handling 
of the public moneys, not even the command of the troops, 
and they were appointed for only three years. Those of the 
nobles who persisted in remaining in their own domains 
were closely watched, and kept from every exercise of op- 
pressiveness or violence. But to the nobles who lived at 
his court, even to those for whom he had little esteem, he 
always exhibited tokens of outward respect, in order that 
he, the chief among them, might appear greater in the eyes 
of the crowd. 

But though they received titles and honors, they were 
allowed no political influence in the State. Louis XIV. 
employed the princes of the blood, even his own brother, as 
little as possible, fearing they might find opportunities to 
distinguish themselves. His brother might have been a 
prince equal to many others ; his nephew possessed the 
qualities which make a superior man; and the Prince of 
Conti was certainly very brave and very capable. They 
were all obliged to extinguish, in idleness or debaucheries, 
talents which might have been made profitable to the coun- 
try. After the death of Mazarin he admitted to his councils 
only one man of the old nobility, the Duke of Beauvilliers, 
governor of the children of the royal house, and chose all 
his ministers from among men of station by no means ex- 
alted. He reserved for the nobles only the more restricted 
field of the military profession, having first taken care to 
discipline them by the stern hand of Louvois and the inflex- 
ible order of promotion, and to deprive them of or abolish 
the high offices that Richelieu had allowed to remain : those 
of colonel-general of the infantry, colonel-general of the 
cavalry, admiral of France, and captain-general of the gal- 
leys. The nobility of France had not succeeded in making 
itself a political class, like that of England ; it was only a 
military caste. 

The Third Estate. — Louis XIV., following out the old 
traditions of the monarchy, preferred to make use of the 
middle classes, who were better instructed and at the same 
time more devoted, because they had not yet perceived the 
inconveniences of absolute power, while they had felt for 
centuries those of feudal rule. Louis XIV. delivered into 
their hands all financial, political, and judicial functions ; 
he quietly established them in the administration of the 



GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XIV. 463 

kingdom ; he energetically advanced them in industry and 
commerce and favored them (e.g., Boileau, Eacine, Moli^re) 
in literature. Louis XIV. thus unconsciously prepared the 
way for democratic France and the Eevolution. But he was 
nowise a bourgeois king. His policy, his intense self- 
esteem, the vigorous ceremonial which made of him a 
dreaded and inaccessible divinity, his carousals, his splen- 
did feasts, all banish from the mind any suggestion of con- 
stitutional monarchy. 

The Clergy ; Declaration of 1682. — Louis maintained the 
same policy towards the clergy as towards the nobility ; 
while he con:^rred honors upon them, he was careful not to 
give them any power. The great nobles were withdrawn 
from the Church' as well as from the administration. The 
clergy were consequently, under Louis XIV., another prop 
of royalty. J^ the affair of the regale the bishops sustained 
the kingfevegi^gainst the Pope. The name regale was given 
to the right pf kings to collect the revenues of certain bene- 
fices, bishopptcs, ^^ archbishoprics during periods of va- 
cancy. In 1673 an edict declared all the sees of France 
subject to the regale. Two bishops refused to obey and were 
supported by the Pope. Louis XIV., in order to put an end 
to the controversy, called an assembly of the French clergy, 
who adopted, in 1682, under the inspiration of Bossuet, four 
propositions, in substance as follows : — 

1. God has not given to Saint Peter and his successors 
any power, either direct or indirect, over temporal matters. 

2. The Gallican Church approves the decrees adopted by 
the council of Constance, which declare ecumenical councils 
superior to the Pope in spiritual affairs. 

3. The rules and usages received in the kingdom and in 
the Gallican Church shall remain unchangeable. 

4. Decisions of the Pope in matters of doctrine are not 
absolute until accepted by the Church. 

Innocent XL refused to grant bulls of investiture to 
the bishops appointed by the government who had been 
members of the assembly. The affair was settled in 1693 
by a compromise. Innocent XII. granted the bulls of in- 
vestiture, and the king ceased to impose upon faculties of 
theology the obligation to teach the four propositions of 1682. 

Protestants, Jansenists, ftuietists. — These discussions with 
the court of Eome were of no profit to dissenters. At the 
height of the quarrel the king revoked the edict of Nantes. 



464 GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XIV. 

Nor did lie temporize with, the Jansenists. These latter 
derived their doctrines from a bishop of Ypres, named 
Jansenius, who died in 1638, and from the Abb6 de Saint- 
Cyran ; tliey held some old opinions, which seemed new, on 
the subjects of grace and predestination. The most illus- 
trious among them, Arnauld and others, retired to Port- 
Royal des Champs, near Versailles, where Pascal joined 
them, and there, living as hermits, these Puritans of Catho- 
licism gave to the world an example of industrious labor of 
hands and brain, of the most earnest piety, and of austerity 
of life which amounted almost to asceticism. They wrote 
excellent books, and were distinguished scholars; almost 
the entire magistracy adopted their doctrines in part, and, 
without any one's being able to assign any reason for it, the 
spirit of political opposition concealed itself behind this 
religious oiDposition. 

Louis XIV. referred their opinions to the court of Rome ; 
and as the sect would not submit to the decisions of the 
spiritual authority, he used against them temporal force 
with a severity which was considered excessive even at that 
day. Pie caused Port-Eoyal des Champs to be destroyed 
in 1709. The bodies of the inoffensive recluses were dis- 
interred. A book of P^re Quesnel, a priest of the Oratory, 
reanimated the disturbances. One hundred and one of its 
propositions were condemned at Pome by the bull Unigeni- 
tus, to which the king in 1712 imposed obedience upon all 
the clergy of France. The Jansenists were punished with 
disgrace, imprisonment, or exile. Quietism had the same 
fate. This was an old doctrine, brought up and dissemi- 
nated by a woman, Madam Guyon. F^nelon, archbishop of 
Cambrai, the former preceptor of the Duke of Burgundy, 
having defended this opinion in a book, Bossuet denounced 
the work (1699), and the Pope condemned it. P^nelon sub- 
mitted with the most Christian self-abnegation. 

Creation of the Police ; Large Standing Army. — Two insti- 
tutions aided the king to accomplish the work of monarchi- 
cal omnipotence, — the police and the army. The first was 
of his own creation. He was the first to appoint lieutenants 
of police for Paris. Then began the system of public light- 
ing ; from the first of November to the first of March, a 
lantern in which was a burning candle was placed at the 
ends and in the middle of each street. The watch was 
increased, or rather instituted. Bodies of firemen replaced 



GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XIV. 465 

the Capuchins in the fire service (1699) . The narrow 
streets were cleaned, widened, and paved, public carriages 
and cabs were established ; the habit of riding on horseback 
was still indulged in Paris by none but a few stubborn repre- 
sentatives of the past centuries. 

The police served another purpose : it inspected written 
matter; it stopped at the post-office, and read, suspected 
correspondence ; and, to relieve the government of slow 
forms of justice, it multiplied the lettres de cachets, which 
deprived subjects of all guarantee of individual liberty. 
The army also served a double end: it faced the enemy 
abroad, and at home it crushed all resistance to the will of 
the sovereign. From this reign date the great standing 
armies, schools of discipline, of loyalty, and of honor, but 
also a heavy burden upon the finances of the country. The 
troops were sent into the provinces to protect the progres- 
sive extension of the authority of the intendants ; they has- 
tened by fear the collection of taxes ; they were even charged 
with the extraordinary duty of leading back the consciences 
of dissenters to the unity of the faith. 

The Court. — Thus all orders of the State, all authorities 
which existed in France, all classes, parliaments, nobility, 
middle classes, clergy, and dissenters were reduced and 
dominated. Under the pressure of authority, characters de- 
generated. Only a few — Vauban, Catinat, Fenelon, Turenne 
— resisted the contagion. The general enslavement showed 
nowhere more plainly than at the court, where Louis im- 
posed on the high nobility a gilded captivity. Versailles 
was built with this in view, and all France was collected 
there, under the eye and hand of the king. The favor of 
the king depended upon three conditions, — to ask and obtain 
a lodging at Versailles, to follow the court everywhere, 
even though ill, even though dying, and to approve of 
everything. Henceforth no more seigniorial independence, 
no more family life, no more connection or communion with 
the country districts ; but an artificial existence, in which 
certain qualities of mind were developed, but true dignity 
and all the virtues that belong to it were lost. 

At these splendid f^tes of Versailles one sees, indeed, 
among all the marvels of the arts, a society incomparable 
for wit, elegance, and fine manners ; but one sees also the 
too numerous errors of the prince himself but lightly veiled. 
The most eminent persons of the State, grave magistrates, 



466 GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XIV. 

illustrious prelates, dared not make the slightest protest 
against the scandal of intrigues doubly adulterous. The 
Duchess de la Valli^re has secured pardon by her deep 
repentance. The haughty Montespan reigned longer over 
the court, but she was in turn supplanted by the Mar- 
chioness of Maintenon, to whom she had confided the educa- 
tion of her children, and the widow of the cripple Scarron 
became the wife of Louis the Great (1685). 

The trouble was not confined to the royal house ; it 
threatened to extend to the State itself ; for Louis, violating 
all civil and religious laws, placed the legitimated princes 
beside the princes of the blood. He forced the court to 
show as much respect to them as to the others ; and public 
morality received a blow from which it has been slow to 
recover. The dukes of Orleans and Venddme, given over 
to wholesale debauchery, the Duke of Antin, caught in the 
very act of theft, noblemen who knew how to repair at 
cards the losses of fortune, a court which according to 
Saint-Simon "sweated hypocrisy," a king who became a 
devotee when he could no longer be anything else, — all this 
shows that morals, conscience, and human dignity are never 
violated with impunity. 

Memorials from the Intendants. — We have an indispu- 
table body of evidence respecting the misery of the period, — 
the reports which the king required of the intendants, re- 
garding the condition of their provinces, for the instruction 
of the Duke of Burgundy, his grandson. Upon each page 
occur these despairing words, " War, mortality, the contin- 
ual quartering and movement of soldiery, service, heavy 
duties, the emigration of the Huguenots, have ruined this 
province." The bridges and roads are in a deplorable con- 
dition, and trade reduced to nothing. The frontier provin- 
ces are, still further, overwhelmed by requisitions, and by 
the marauding of the soldiery, who, receiving neither pay 
nor rations, undertook to find their own wages. In the 
district of Kouen 650,000 of the 700,000 inhabitants have 
only piles of straw for beds. The peasants in certain prov- 
inces have lapsed into a savage state, living frequently on 
herbs and roots like the beasts, and, wild as savages, flee 
when approached. 

Signs of a New Spirit. — Meanwhile, however, a few men, 
not perhaps of singularly great minds, but who at any rate 
had honest hearts and elevated characters, — F^nelon, the 



GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XIV. 467 

Duke of Beauvilliers, Saint-Simon, and Catinat, — saw the 
clouds appearing on the horizon, and some of them ven- 
tured to offer respectful counsel. Vauban, who grieved 
over all the troubles of the country, made plans to alleviate 
them ; he asked for the re-establishment of the edict of 
Nantes, and the restoration of religious toleration ; he pro- 
posed to substitute for all other forms of taxation a single 
tax, the royal tithe, which should be paid by nobles and 
priests as well as common people. When he presented his 
book to the king in 1707, Louis, forgetting the great ser- 
vices of the marshal, had the work condemned to the 
pillory. Six weeks after, Vauban died. Colbert had already 
died of despair ; and it was less on account of his religious 
opinions than his political ideas, that F^nelon was sent into 
the exile from which he never returned. In that ancient 
Greece that he loved so well F^nelon rediscovered the idea 
which he transmitted to the eighteenth century, — that gov- 
ernments are made for the governed. In 1690 there was 
printed in Holland a collection of fifteen memoirs under the 
title of " The Groans of Enslaved France," in which were 
claimed, as among the ancient liberties of the country, the 
privileges of the three orders, and the convocation of the 
States-General. These were signs announcing the new spirit 
which was to agitate French society in the eighteenth cen- 
tury after its experience of the short-lived benefits and 
dangers attending absolute royalty, of which Louis XIV. 
had just given the most striking example. 



468 THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 



CHAPTER LIV. 

THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 

Literary Character of the Seventeenth Century in France. 

— The sixteenth century had seen religious reformation ; the 
eighteenth century was to see political reformation. Placed 
between the two revolutionary ages, the seventeenth century 
maintained so perfect an equilibrium between the powers 
of the mind, a capacity for writing so completely equal to 
the capacity for thinking, that it has remained in an especial 
degree the literary age of France. 

The Age of Louis XIV. before Louis XIV. — At the time 
when Louis XIV. took the government into his own hands, 
France had already acquired a portion of the literary glory 
that the seventeenth century had in reserve for her. Cor- 
neille, Descartes, and Pascal had written their masterpieces ; 
Madame de S6vign6, La Eochefoucauld, Moli^re, La Fontaine, 
Bossuet, were at the height of their powers ; the two great 
painters of the age, Lesueur and Poussin, were dying or 
about to die. French society had then, in 1661, all the 
necessary capacities. One thing only was wanting, — per- 
fection of taste ; but the Lettres provinciales (1657) struck 
the first blow, the Pr&cieuses ridicules (1659) the second, 
and the third was to be struck by Boileau, who had just 
written his first satire. 

All that genius asks of power is, not to oppose it. But gov- 
ernments can also sustain it and stimulate it by favors, or, 
better still, by consideration, and Louis XIV. perceived this 
and did it admirably. The grateful muses bestowed on him 
more than they received; they consecrated his name. We 
ourselves will preserve the consecrated phrase of the " age of 
Louis XIV." in order to designate that period of our litera- 
ture which extends from the early writings of . Corneille 
to those of Voltaire, because the king had a taste for arts 
and letters, and bestowed favors which, while they did 
not create great writers, surely paved the way for their 
supremacy. 



THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 469 

Academies and Pensions. — Louis XIV. not only considered 
literature a power, but regarded it as a necessary ornament, 
as a luxury worthy of a great king. Consequently he 
favored letters, and gave literature an organized govern- 
ment, of which Colbert was the minister. The members of 
the academies had, in a sense, public duties, and pensions 
and rewards for attendance were their salary. The French 
Academy continued to prepare the dictionary of the lan- 
guage, and the Academy of Inscrij^tions wrote devices for 
medals and escutcheons and inscriptions for monuments, 
whose decorations were designed by the Academy of Paint- 
ing and Sculpture. 

The academies formed corporations of literature, sciences, 
and arts. Their most distinguished members had, besides, 
official duties and a rank at court. Jules Mansard was the 
king's chief architect and superintendent of buildings ; 
Lebrun was his chief painter ; Lulli, his chief musician. 
Louis XIV. did not grant poetry a coiirt office ; but he 
bestowed one upon history, as if to secure in advance the 
favorable judgment of posterity. Racine and Boileau were 
his historiographers. Even his valet Moli^re had, as assail- 
ant of the nobility, his part in the great drama which went 
on so gravely around the king at Versailles. 

Prose Writers. — "In eloquence," says Voltaire, "■ in poetry, 
in literature, in books both of morals and of amusement, the 
French were the lawgivers of Europe." A genuine elo- 
quence in the use of the French language had hitherto been 
but seldom attained. Jean de Lingendes, bishop of M^con, 
was the first orator who spoke in the grand style. Balzac 
(1594-1654), at this time was giving rhythm and harmony 
to prose, and Voiture (1598-1648) was giving some idea of 
the light graces of epistolary style. 

" One of the works which contributed most towards form- 
ing the taste of the nation," says Voltaire {Si^de de Louis 
XIV.), ''Avas the small collection of the Maxims of Francis, 
Duke of LaEochefoucauld (1613-1680) . Although there was 
scarcely more than one thought in this book, which was 
that self-love is the motive in everything, nevertheless this 
thought was presented in so many, different aspects, that it 
was almost always attractive. The little collection was 
read with avidity ; it accustomed men to think and to give 
their thoughts a lively, concise, and delicate style. 

" But the lirst book of genius which appeared in prose, 



470 THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 

was the collection of the Lettres provinciales in 1657.^ All 
the varieties of eloquence are exhibited in it. There is not 
a single word which in the space of a hundred years has 
undergone the change which so often takes place in living 
tongues. This book marks the period of permanent estab- 
lishment in the language. . . . 

" One of the first who sent forth from the pulpit truly 
eloquent reasoning was Bourdaloue (1632-1704), about the 
year 1668. He was a new luminary. After him came other 
pulpit orators, Massillon, bishop of Clermont (1662-1742), 
for example, whose discourses contain more ornament, finer 
and more impressive representations of the manners of the 
age ; but not one of them has caused him to be forgotten. 
In his style, nervous rather than ornate, devoid of imagina- 
tive expressions, he appears to wish rather to convince than 
to touch, and he never seems to think of pleasing. 

" He had been preceded by Bossuet (1627-1704), after- 
wards bishop of Meaux. Bossuet, who became so distin- 
guished a man, had preached when very young before the 
king and queen in 1661, long before Bourdaloue Avas known. 
His sermons, sustained by a noble and affecting manner, 
were the first that had been heard at court which approached 
the sublime, and had such success that the king caused a 
letter to be written in his name to Bossuet's father to con- 
gratulate him upon having such a son. But when Bourda- 
loue appeared, Bossuet no longer passed for the leading 
preacher. He had already given himself to the composition 
of funeral orations, a species of eloquence which requires 
imagination and a majestic grandeur approaching poetry. 
. . . The funeral eulogy of Madame, who had been taken 
away in the flower of her age, and had died in his arms, 
achieved the most signal and most unusual of successes, 
that of drawing tears from the eyes of the courtiers. . . . 

" The French were tlie only people who succeeded in this 
department of eloquence. Later, Bossuet invented another, 
which would have little success save in his own hands. 
He applied the art of oratory to history itself, from which 
it seems naturally excluded. 

" His Discourse upon Universal History, composed for the 
education of the dauphin, had no model and has had no imi- 
tators. One is astonished at the majestic strength with 

^Voltaire forgets Descartes' Discourse concerning Method (1637). 



THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 471 

which he describes manners, governments, the growth and 
doAvnfall of great empires, and at those rapid and yet vigo- 
rously true strokes with which he painted and pronounced 
judgment upon all nations. . . . 

" Almost all the works which distinguished this century 
were in a style unknown to antiquity. Telemaque is one of 
them. Fenelon (1651-1715), the disciple and friend of 
Bossuet, and who afterwards became, in spite of himself, 
his rival and his enemy, composed this singular book, which 
is at once a romance and a poem, and which substitutes 
rhythmic prose for versification. He seems to have desired 
to treat romance as Bosstiet had treated history, by giving 
it a dignity and charm till then unknown, and especially by 
drawing from his fictions morals useful to mankind. He 
had composed this book to be used for the instruction of 
the Duke of Burgundy, whose tutor he was. Full of the 
literature of the ancients, and born with a vivid and deli- 
cate imagination, he created a style which was all his own, 
and which flowed from a never-failing source. . . . 

" Among productions of a unique kind may be mentioned 
the GaracUres of La Bruy^re (1644-1696). This style of 
writing was as rare among the ancients as that of Telemaque. 
A rapid, concise, nervous style, picturesque expressions, a 
way of using words which was entirely original, but disre- 
garded no rules, attracted attention, and the allusions which 
were constantly to be found in the book completed its suc- 
cess." 

Voltaire says only a word or two of Madame de Sevigne 
(1636-1696). She deserves more ; for in her conversations 
with her daughter she transports Versailles and Paris to 
Grignan, and teaches us more of the real history of the 
times than can be learned from many large volumes. So 
long as wit of excellent quality and a frank, clear style are 
enjoyed, the world will never weary of reading her fine and 
often eloquent letters, in which are seen reflected the splen- 
dors and miseries of a unique society. 

France is of all countries the richest in memoirs. This 
curious branch of historical literature began there at an 
early period, with Villehardouin and Joinville. The seven- 
teenth century abounds in memoirs, generally by acute and 
discriminating writers, who reveal to us the secret causes of 
many events and movements. Those of Eichelieu are a 
precious mine for the political history of the time ; those of 



472 THE AGE OF LOUIS XI V. 

Madame de Motteville (1621-1689), the confidante of Anne 
of Austria, introduce us to the private life of that princess. 
Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz (1614-1679), has left a 
book which is one ~of the monuments of the French lan- 
guage, and which will always be read with pleasure, even 
though one cannot always believe the author. In this kind 
of literature the great nobles willingly engaged. We have 
the Duke of La Rochefoucauld's memoirs bearing on the 
regency of Anne of Austria, and, for the last part of the 
reign of Louis XIY. and the beginning of that of Louis XV., 
the twenty volumes of the duke and peer, Rouvroy de Saint- 
Simon, a writer of the greatest talent. 

Poets. — Eegnier and Malherbe belong to the preceding 
century, though one died in 1613, and the other in 1628. 
With Corneille (1606-1684) masterpieces at last appear, and 
in quick succession are put upon the stage, which he has ele- 
vated to the level of the Greek theatre. " Pierre Corneille," 
says Voltaire, " is so much the more admirable because he 
was surrounded only by bad models when he' first began to 
produce tragedies. Moreover, these bad models were held in 
good estimation, and, worst of all, encouraged by Richelieu, 
the patron of men of letters, but not of good taste. Corneille 
consequently was obliged to combat his age, his rivals, and 
the cardinal, who decried the Cicl and disapproved of Poly- 
eucte. Corneille formed his style unassisted ; but Louis XIV., 
Colbert, Sophocles, and Euripides contributed to the forma- 
tion of Racine -(1639-1699). An ode which he composed at 
the age of twenty years, on the occasion of the king's mar- 
riage, procured him an unexpected donation from the king, 
and determined him to adopt poetry as a career. His 
reputation increased from day to day, and that of the works 
of Corneille somewhat diminished. The reason is that 
Racine, in all his works after his Alexandre, is always 
elegant, always correct, and Corneille too frequently fails 
in these respects. . . . 

'• It was a singular destiny that made Moli^re (1622- 
1673) the contemporary of Corneille and Racine. It is not 
true that Moliere, when he appeared, found the theatre 
absolutely deficient in good comedies. Corneille himself 
had given Le Menteur, and Moliere had still only produced 
two of his masterpieces, when La 3f^re coquette of Quinault, 
a play of both character and intrigue, was alread}' before the 
public. It was published in 1664, and was the first comedy 



THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 473 

in which were presented those characters which have since 
been called the marquises. Most of the great nobles of the 
court of Louis XIV. tried to imitate that air of grandeur, 
distinction, and dignity which characterized their master. 
Those of inferior rank copied the haughty bearing of their 
superiors ; and of course there were those, and a great 
number of them, who carried this haughty manner and 
this intensity of self-assertion to a ridiculous extent. This 
affectation lasted a long time. Moli^re attacked it fre- 
quently ; he helped to laugh down these aspiring subalterns, 
the affectation of the precieuses, the pedantry of learned 
women, the quackery of doctors. Moli^re was, so to speak, 
a lawgiver of social good sense. I refer here only to this 
service rendered to his own age ; his other merits are suffi- 
ciently well known. ... 

" This was a period worthy the attention of posterity, 
when the heroes of Corneille and Racine, the personages of 
Moli^re, the symphonies of LuUi, all new to the nation, and 
the voices of Bossuet and of Bourdaloue, were heard by 
Louis XIV. and Madame, so noted for her good taste, a 
Cond6, a Turenne, a Colbert, and by that throng of superior 
men of all sorts who flourished at that time. The day will 
never return when a La Eochef oucauld will pass from a con- 
versation Avith a Pascal and an Arnauld to attend a play of 
Corneille. And La Fontaine (1621-1695), much less chaste 
in style, much less correct in language, but original in his 
artlessness and in the grace peculiar to him, rises by the 
very force of his simplicity almost to a level with these 
great men." 

Philosophy. — Philosophy had just been transformed by 
Descartes (1596-1650), less by what he built up than by 
what he destroyed. His system has fallen ; his method still 
exists. Since Socrates there has not been so important 
a philosophical reform. Descartes accepted as true, in 
the department of moral and physical sciences, only what 
seemed evident to the reason, and this evidence he placed, 
so far as concerns philosophical matters, in the irresistible 
authority of the manifestations of consciousness. Thus in 
his Discourse concerning Method (1637), and in his Medi- 
tations (1641), he tried to prove, simply by processes of 
reasoning, the existence of God, the spirituality and immor- 
tality of the soul, the liberty and consequently the respon- 
sibility of the human will. His principles were adopted by 



474 THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 

the most religious minds of the seventeenth century ; they 
inspired Malebranche (1638-1715), Avho has been called the 
Plato of France, Bossuet, and F^nelon. 

Thus France in the seventeenth century was laying the 
foundations of speculative philosophy in contradistinction to 
the triumphant empiricism of Bacon and Locke in England, 
as in the eighteenth century she defended experience 
against the nebulous metaphysics of Germany ; going on, 
step by step, guided by her native gift of lucidity, in the 
two highways opened to the world by Plato and Aristotle, 
and always aiming to re-establish equilibrium by leaning 
toward that side which contemporaneous exaggerations were 
endangering. 

Pascal (1623-1662), another great philosophical thinker, 
takes rank also as a great writer by his Lettres provindaUs 
(1657), against the loose system of morals, upheld by the 
Jesuits, and in his Pensees, fragments of a work which he 
intended to compose upon the truth of Christianity. With 
Pascal should be mentioned his friends, the pioiis recluses 
of Port-Royal, intensely earnest, but somewhat narrow 
minds, who founded, in the heart of Catholicism and of the 
Galilean Church, an energetic and active sect, which was 
persecuted by Louis XIV., and which revived theological 
discussions in the middle of the seventeenth century. The 
principal doctors of Jansenism were Le Maistre de Sacy, 
Antoine Arnauld (whose life was a perpetual theological 
discussion with the Jesuits, with the Protestants, and with 
Malebranche), Nicole, and Lancelot. 

Erudition. — A few laborious spirits continued in en- 
deavors to elucidate classical antiquity, and to clear up the 
chaos of the nation's early history. They had little or no 
influence upon the language, since usually they were not 
stylists, and many of their books were in Latin, but they 
had a powerful influence upon thought. The greatest of 
these learned men were Casaubon, Scaliger, Salmasius, Du- 
cange, and Baluze, several Benedictines of Saint-Maur, 
Mabillon, Montfaucon, etc., and the Protestant Bayle. 
Mezeray (1610-1683) wrote a history of France to Louis 
XIIL, which is more valuable for its style than for its 
matter; Abb6 Fleury (1640-1723) wrote an ecclesiastical 
history of considerable repute; Le Nain de Tillemont, a 
learned history of the Roman emperors. 

Literary Influence of France. — No other nation of Europe 



THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 475 

could exhibit such, a magnificent collection of literary pro- 
ductions. Italy and Germany were in complete moral 
degeneration. Spain still possessed eminent painters and 
too prolific writers. England had had Shakespeare in the 
beginning of the century, Milton in the middle, and Dryden 
at the end ; but its literature had not gained influence be- 
yond its own island. France, on the contrary, by the recog- 
nized superiority of her wit and her taste, forced all Europe 
to accept the sway of her artists and her authors. 

Sciences. — In the sciences she kept abreast of the move- 
ment, but was not at its head ; for though she had Descartes 
and Pascal, other countries possessed Kepler, Galileo, New- 
ton, and Leibnitz. Alchemy, magic, astrology, all the follies 
of the Middle Age, became sciences from the moment that 
man ceased to concern himself with the impenetrable essence 
of things, and instead of stopping before isolated phenomena 
proceeded to investigate the laws which produce them. 
This period began with Copernicus, in the sixteenth cen- 
tury ; but it was not until the seventeenth century that the 
revolution was accomplished, and triumphed under Kepler, 
Bacon, and Descartes. 

Descartes greatly advanced algebra by inventing the 
notation of powers by numerical exponents ; also the geom- 
etry of curves, which enabled him to solve problems hith- 
erto considered insoluble. He discovered the true law of 
refraction ; he believed, with Galileo, in the theory of the 
earth's motion round the sun, and his system of vortices, 
though in itself chimerical, was the germ of the celebrated 
Newtonian hypothesis of attraction. To the mind of Des- 
cartes, as to that of Newton, the problem of the physical 
universe is a problem of mechanics, and Descartes was the 
first to show, if not the solution, at any rate the true nature 
of the problem. Pascal composed his treatise on conic 
sections, at the age of sixteen. A little later he invented 
the calculus of probabilities, demonstrated the weight of 
the air by his famous experiment on the Puy de D6me, and 
invented the dray, and perhaps the hydraulic press. 

After these two great men come a numerous crowd of 
others, — Pierre Eermat, perhaps the most powerful mathe- 
matical mind of this period; Abb6 Mariotte and Denis 
Papin, who first thought of employing compressed steam as 
a motive force, and made in Germany, on the Fulda, some 
experiments with a steamboat which ran against the current. 



476 THE AGE OF LOUIS XIY. 

Geography was reformed by Nicolas Sanson and Guil- 
laume Delisle ; Tournefort revived the study of botany. 
The royal press equalled the Dutch publications in correct- 
ness and elegance ; and surgery continued the traditions of 
Anibroise Pare. Three foreigners whom Colbert attracted 
to France justified by their Avorks the favors bestowed by 
the king, — the Dane Roemer, the Dutchman Huyghens, 
and the Italian Donienico Cassini. 

Arts; Paintings. — Except in painting, the great age of 
French art is the sixteenth, and not the seventeenth, century. 
There is nothing among the monuments of Louis XIV. 
which equals the central pavilion of the Tuileries, the old 
Louvre, a part of Fontainebleau, or the chateaux of Francis 
I. and Henry II. But there were four painters of the first 
rank ; Poussin, Lesueur, Claude Lorraine, and Lebrun ; one 
admirable sculptor, Puget ; architects of talent. Mansard 
and Perrault ; and a skilful musician, Lulli. 

Poussin (1594-1665) lived a long time at Rome and was 
considered the greatest painter of his time ; in spite of his 
too sombre coloring he remains at the head of the French 
school on account of the moral elevation, the dramatic inter- 
est, the richness and poetic quality of his compositions, his 
pursuit of the ideal, and the dignity of his life. Lesueur 
and Lebrun may be regarded as his pupils. Lesueur was 
born at Paris, lived poor and obscure, and died at the age of 
thirty-eight in 1655. He was a frank and gentle spirit ; his 
paintings, always graceful, even in the sternest subjects, by 
softness of tone and delicacy of touch express admirably 
the sentiments and even the deepest affections of the per- 
sonages whom he represented. Of another sort was his rival, 
Lebrun, born at Paris two years later (1619), whose talent, 
often theatrical, better suited the taste of Louis XIV. The 
king appointed him his chief painter, and commissioned 
him to decorate the great gallery of Versailles. He was 
at work on it fourteen years. He was, until the death of 
Colbert, the arbiter and even the dictator of the arts in 
France ; his influence and sometimes his touch may be recog- 
nized in all the works of the time. His drawing was weak 
and heavy, the expression of his faces somewhat exaggerated; 
he had neither the bright coloring of Titian nor the natural 
grace of Lesueur, nor the spirit of Rubens, nor Poussin's 
depth of thought. Yet he holds the chief place among 
painters of the second rank. The establishment of the 



THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 477 

French school at Eome is due to him ; thither the young 
artists who have taken what is called the grand prix de 
Rome are sent at the expense of the government to finish 
their studies among the masterpieces of antiquity and the 
great Italian masters. A place must be kept beside these 
four master-painters for Philippe de Champagne, who left 
some admirable portraits. Claude Grel6e, called Claude le 
Lorrain (born in Lorraine in 1600, died at Eome in 1682), 
is the best of the French landscape painters, and one of the 
best in Europe : he is distinguished for the richness of his 
style and the beauty of his coloring. Others to be noted 
are Eigaud, the most eminent of French portrait painters, 
and Watteau, of Valenciennes (1684-1722), who inaugurated 
the genre style with mannerism, but with brilliant coloring. 

Sculpture and Engraving. — Puget, like Michael An gelo, 
whose pride and energy he equalled, was at the same time 
painter, architect, and sculptor. He was born at Marseilles 
in 1622, and died in 1694. He was for a long time engaged 
in carving wooden figures for the sterns and galleries of the 
ships of Toulon, built several splendid hotels on the Cane- 
bi^re, and filled Genoa with his masterpieces. Louis XIV. 
ordered of him the group of Perseus and that of Milo of 
Croton, remarkable for energy of expression and truthful- 
ness of design. But Puget was a man of too independent 
a character to succeed at Versailles. He left no pupils. 
Coysevox, the two Coustous, and Giraxdon are the product 
of another system ; they are rather sculptors of the graceful 
school, masters of a brilliant and easy style without ele- 
vation. Girardon filled Versailles with his works ; the 
mausoleum of Cardinal Eichelieu at the Sorbonne is his 
masterpiece. 

Architecture. — Fran9ois Mansard forsook the elegance 
and grace of the Eenaissance for a style which he thought 
majestic, but which was in reality heavy. He invented the 
mansard roof. His nephew, Jules Hardouin Mansard, was 
a cold and regular genius, who almost attained grandeur 'of 
design, because Louis XIV. gave him unlimited space and 
'money ; but who seems wanting in inspiration and elegance, 
except in his beautiful cupola of the Invalides. Claude Per- 
rault (1628-1688) was at once a surgeon, a physician, and 
a great architect. 

Music. — The Florentine, Lulli, came to Paris at thirty 
years of age, and was, with Quinault, the real founder of 



478 . THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 

the opera in France. His music now seems cold and char- 
acterless, even in the case of sacred music, in which he 
excelled. His contemporaries held another opinion : " I do 
not believe," wrote Madame de Sevign^, upon hearing the 
service sung for the Chancellor Seguier, "that there will 
be any other music than his in heaven." 

Monuiiients and Endowments. — The principal monuments 
of the reign of Louis XIV. are : the Val-de-Grace, the Obser- 
vatoire, built after the designs of the astronomer Picard and 
of Claude Perrault (1666) ; the Porte St. Denis, and the Porte 
St. Martin; the Invalides, with its church; the Place du 
Carrousel, between the Louvre and the Tuileries ; the Place 
des Victoires, and the Place Venddme, built or rather en- 
larged to receive the statues which Marshal de la Feuillade 
and the municipality of Paris had erected to Louis XIV. 
at the time of the treaty of Nymwegen. 

Work upon the Tuileries had been carried on from the- 
beginning of the reign ; the west fagade was completed, the 
garden was reunited to the chMeau and laid out upon a new 
plan. There was more to be done to the Louvre. Under 
Louis XIII., Lemercier had finished the western interior 
fa9ade. The masterpiece of Pierre Lescot was now to be 
completed. Colbert submitted the matter to competition ; 
the plans of the physician Claude Perrault were preferred. 
Between the years 1666 and 1674 the celebrated colonnade 
of the Louvre was built. At the same time the outer south- 
ern fayade overlooking the Seine, and also the northern, were 
commenced. These great works were at first carried for- 
ward with great activity ; by degrees the work progressed 
more slowly, and finally it was suspended entirely in spite 
of the remonstrances of Colbert. The king then built Ver- 
sailles. 

Louis XIV. disliked Paris, which had given birth to the 
Fronde, and whose monuments told of so many other princes. 
Versailles seemed to him a safer place, which he could fill 
with his own majesty, and where the court, hitherto lost in 
the immense capital city, would assume all the distinction 
of royal domesticity as the palace of the monarch became 
surrounded by a princely town. The works undertaken 
from the year 1661 were entrusted to Jules Mansard, and 
were continued without interruption till the end of the 
reign. LeNdtre, Lebrun, and G-irardon embellished this 
royal dwelling-place, which cost two hundred and fifty or 



THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 479 

three hundred millions of the nation's money, and where 
nothing is commemorative of France but everything sug- 
gests the king. Versailles was poorly supplied with water ; 
the machine of Marly was built at great expense. Still 
other waterworks, of gigantic extent, were projected; but 
after enormous expense had been incurred, the king was 
forced to abandon them. 

The king also built at this time the great Trianon and 
Marly (1679), which, according to Saint-Simon, cost as much 
as Versailles. Last of all, the chateaux of St. Germain, 
Fontainebleau, Chambord, St. Cloud, and Sceaux were en- 
larged and restored. It is estimated that 160,000,000 livres, 
which would amount at the present time to two or three 
times as much, were spent on these constructions. There 
was certainly an excessive disproportion between the ex- 
penses incurred for the fancies of the king and those which 
had for their object the interest of the country. This was 
the inevitable consequence of a political system which 
placed at the discretion of the prince, without discussion 
and without control, the whole public welfare. 

Beginning of a New Literature. — Louis XIV. established 
the absolute authority of kings, but at the same time he 
encouraged industry and literature. Thus he fostered the 
two forces destined to overturn absolutism itself. The one 
would give the Third Estate wealth, which would cause 
it to demand political safeguards ; the other, intelligence, 
which would cause it to demand rights. The spirit of 
criticism which, during the minority of Louis XIV., had 
advanced so powerfully in the sphere of philosophical and 
religious subjects, had recoiled before the splendors of his 
reign, and had either become silent or taken refuge in the 
cells of a few recluses. It reappeared when sincere or offi- 
cial enthusiasm fell exhausted beneath the repeated strokes 
of public misfortune. The study of letters leads us then 
to the same result as that of politics, and we shall end this 
chapter, like the preceding one, by announcing the approach 
of threatening changes. 



FOURTEENTH PERIOD. 

The Eighteenth Centuey. — Development of 
THE Abuses of Absolute Monakchy. — Prog- 
ress of Public Opinion. (1715-1789.) 

CHAPTER LV. 

MINORITY OF LOUIS XV. AND REGENCY OF THE DUKE 
OF ORLEANS. 

(1715-1733 A.D.) 

Regency of the Duke of Orleans (1715-1723). — The 
weight of the authority of Louis XIV. had been crushing 
during his last years. When the nation felt it lifted, it 
breathed more freely ; the court and the city burst into dis- 
respectful demonstrations of joy; the very coffin of the 
great king was insulted. The new king was five years old. 
Who was to govern ? Louis XIV. had indeed left a will, 
but he had not deceived himself with regard to the value of 
it. " As soon as I am dead, it will be disregarded ; I know 
too well what became of the will of the king, my father ! " 

As after the death of Henry IV. and Louis XIIL, there 
was a moment of feudal reaction; but the decline of the 
nobility may be measured by the successive weakening of its 
efforts in each case. Under Mary de' Medici it was still able 
to make a civil war ; under Anne of Austria it produced 
the Fronde ; after Louis XIV. it only produced memorials. 
The Duke of Saint-Simon desired that the first prince of 
the blood, Philip of Orleans, to whom the will left only a 
shadow of power, should demand the regency from the dukes 
and peers, as heirs and representatives of the ancient 
grand vassals. But the Duke of Orleans convoked the 



REGENCY OF THE DUKE OF ORLEANS. 481 

Parliament in order to break down the posthumous despotism 
of the old king, feigning that the king had committed the 
government to his hands. The regency, with the right to 
appoint the council of regency as he would, was conferred 
upon him, and the command of the royal household was 
taken from the Duke of Maine, who yielded this important 
prerogative only after a violent altercation. 

As a reward for the services of his two allies, the Duke 
of Orleans called the high nobility into affairs, by substitut- 
ing for the ministries six councils, in which they occupied 
almost all the places, and accorded to Parliament the right 
of remonstrance. But two years had hardly passed when 
the ministries were re-established, and the Parliament again 
condemned to silence. It was plain that neither nobility 
nor Parliament were to be the heirs of the absolute mon- 
archy. 

State of France. — The regent had possession of the gov- 
ernment ; but the heritage left by Louis XIV. was a terrible 
thing : more than 2,400,000,000 of public debt, with a cash 
balance of 800,000 livres ; an excessive scarcity of specie ; 
commerce paralyzed ; the nobility overwhelmed with debt ; 
the magistrates and the annuitants long deprived of the 
revenues due them from the State ; the peasants in need of 
everything ; many portions of the country uncultivated and 
deserted. Peace, at any price, was necessary to enable the 
country to recover and the regent to maintain his position. 

Alliance with England (1717). — In England, the Whigs 
again asked for war ; but Europe was for the moment tired 
of fighting, and the house of Hanover felt the necessity of 
strengthening its position before attempting anytliing out- 
side. As for Spain, Philip V. again claimed the regency, 
and proposed, if the young king died, to claim the crown 
himself. To form an alliance against Spain with England, 
the jealous guardian of Philip V.'s renunciations of the throne 
of France, and thus to fortify himself against personal dan- 
ger, was the policy of the regent — a policy which was useful 
to himself, and might be made tiseful also to France ; but 
that was conditional on the way in which it was carried out. 

By the Triple Alliance concluded January 4, 1717, between 
France, England, and Holland, the regent consented to 
send away the Stuart Pretender, to demolish the works 
at Mardyk, and fill up the port of Dunkirk. Commerce and 
even navigation in the South Sea was forbidden to the French. 



482 MINOBITY OF LOUIS XV. 

The Protestant succession in England was recognized, and 
in return tlie Englisli government recognized the succession 
to the throne of France established by the treaty of Utrecht ; 
that is to say, the exclusion of Philip V. ; finally, a defensive 
alliance between the two countries was concluded. 

War with Spain (1719-1720). — Cardinal Alberoni, the 
bold minister of Philip V., had undertaken to restore the 
finances, agriculture, and marine of Spain, and to win back 
the domains which had been taken away by the treaty of 
Utrecht. The emperor had enough to occupy him with the 
Turks ; to give England something to do, Alberoni intended 
sending against her the king of Sweden, Charles XII. A 
plot was organized in Prance, among all the enemies of the 
regent, by the Spanish ambassador Cellamare and the Duch- 
ess of Maine. But the plot was discovered, and the Duke 
of Cellamare arrested together with the Duke and Duchess 
of Maine. The regent declared for reprisals. 

A new treaty, in 1718, reunited Prance, England, Hol- 
land, and Austria. The English attacked the Spanish fleet, 
without declaration of war, on the coast of Sicily and de- 
feated it (1718). Another fleet, which was to convey the 
Pretender to Scotland, was destroyed hj a tempest, and 
the English took Vigo, while Berwick entered Spain with 
the Prench army (1719). Alberoni succumbed to such an 
accumulation of reverses, and Spain subscribed to the con- 
ditions of the quadruple alliance. The Duke of Savoy was 
forced to accept Sardinia in exchange for Sicily, which, with 
the Milanese, remained in the possession of the emperor. 
But the eldest child of the second queen of Spain was 
given the reversion of the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and 
Tuscany (1720). This war had thus established more 
firmly the domination of Austria over Italy, and that of 
England upon the ocean. France had spent millions and 
had won no glory. 

Dubois. — Who, then, served the enemies of Prance so 
faithfully ? A councillor to whom the regent confided 
everything, the abb6 Dubois. " All vice," says Saint-Simon, 
" perfidy, avarice, debauchery, ambition, the basest flattery, 
struggled in him for the mastery." Added to these he pos- 
sessed a supple and active mind, extreme maliciousness, 
and a tremendous capacity for work. Such was the former 
preceptor of the Duke of Orleans, who had communicated 
to his pupil as many of his vices as the generous nature of 



REGENCY OF THE DUKE OF ORLEANS. 483 

the latter would absorb. Dubois liad negotiated the treaty 
of the Triple Alliance very skilfvilly. The regent rewarded 
him for it by giving him, at the request of Great Britain, 
the ministry of foreign affairs. England, we are assured, 
paid him enough to insure his good offices, — fifty thousand 
crowns a year. He did even better after ; he persuaded the 
regent to make him archbishop of Cambrai, received all the 
orders in one day, and profaned by his presence the seat 
so recently consecrated by the virtues of F^nelon. Finally, 
a little later, he became cardinal by spending eight millions. 

Disorder of the Finances. — A debt of 2,400,000,000 livres, 
of which almost a third had already matured ; a gross revenue 
in 1715 of 165,000,000, a net revenue of 69,000,000, for an 
expenditure of 147,000,000, and consequently a deficit of 
78,000,000 ; the greater part of the receipts for the follow- 
ing year already expended : such was the condition of the 
finances at the death of Louis XIV. Some advised bank- 
ruptcy. The Duke de Noailles, president of the council 
of finances, obtained at first some resources by recoining 
specie ; then he undertook to diminish the debt by a reduc- 
tion of the annuities and a strict examination into frauds, 
and to reduce the expenses. Several persons were ruined 
by the investigation, but the greater number escaped by 
bribery. 220,000,000 had been counted upon from this 
operation ; it x^roduced only 70,000,000, of which only 
15,000,000 in cash ever reached the treasury. In spite of 
these performances, and several useful measures, the deficit 
of the year 1716 was still 97,000,000. The remedy, there- 
fore, had not been found. Then a man came forward 
who claimed to suggest the proper one. 

Law's Financial Revolution (1715-1720), —The Scotch- 
man, John Law, initiated at an early age in the operations 
of banking, later accustomed to the combinations of gam- 
bling, by which he had made his fortune, and gifted with 
great powers of intelligence and speech, conceived the idea 
of creating a new power, — that of credit, basing his deduc- 
tions on this half-truth, that abundance of specie gives 
prosperity to commerce and industry, from which he drew 
the entirely false conclusion that it is advantageous to 
substitute joaper money, which is susceptible of indefinite 
multiplication, for specie. 

The Duke de Noailles was opposed to making the first 
experiment upon the finances of the State, and Law was 



484 MINORITY OF LOUIS XV. 

obliged to limit his operations to tlie foiinding of a private 
bank with, a cajDital of 6,000,000, the stock payable, one- 
fonrth in specie and three-fourths in state notes. The bank 
discounted at six per cent per annum, and soon even at four, 
and issued notes which it paid at sight, in specie. Then 
every one rushed to it, and contended for its paper, which 
singularly facilitated commercial transactions. Business 
revived, and the State established the bank's reputation for 
solvency, by ordering the royal treasury officials to receive 
its paper as money in payment of dues and taxes (1717). In 
1718 it was made a royal bank. 

But Law had added to the bank a company which ob- 
tained exclusive privileges of trade in the valley of the 
Mississippi. Marvellous results were expected from the 
exploration of Louisiana. Reports Avere spread of mines 
of gold and silver discovered there. Soon the Compagnie 
d'Occident, absorbing the Senegal Company and the West 
Lidia Company, took the general title of Compagnie des 
Indes, and prospectively opened all portions of the globe to 
speculators. Such were the extravagant hopes formed upon 
this enterprise, that shares of five hundred livres were sold 
at ten, twenty, thirty, and forty times their value. The 
treasury notes, which had fallen to about seventy or eighty 
per cent, went up in value on account of the need of them 
for buying shares, and the State paid its debts with a paper 
which it could multiply at will without alarming credit. 

This was the most brilliant moment of the system. The 
shares went up, in October, 1719, to twenty thousand francs. 
The Kue Quincampoix, in which the royal bank stood, was 
constantly crowded to suffocation. All classes were given 
up to frenzied stock -jobbing. Enormous profits were made . 
in a moment. A tanner of Montelimart retired with 70,000,- 
000, a banker's servant with 50,000,000, a Savoyard with 
40,000,000. The Duke of Bourbon and his mother won 60,- 
000,000. The regent won also, and as much as he wanted ; 
but all for his courtiers, for he did not know how to keep 
anything. Public morality fell very low under the effects 
of these sudden changes of fortune and unlawful gains. 

But the bank was serving its purpose ; it loaned to the 
State 1,600,000,000 of paper money, with which the latter 
reimbursed its creditors, and which returned to the bank in 
exchange for the shares of the company. In vain Law en- 
deavored to moderate the issue of paper ; he could no longer 



REGENCY OF THE DUKE OF ORLEANS. 485 

control it. The issues exceeded 3,000,000,000, wliile the 
entire specie of France did not amount to more than 700,- 
000,000. This disproportion made a catastrophe certain. 
The whole system was kept up only by the confidence of the 
public. About the end of 1719 a few persons lost enthu- 
siasm ; the more prudent ones drew specie from the bank, 
or sold their shares for gold, silver, diamonds, or lands. The 
shares ceased to go up, wavered, then fell rapidly. Every 
one foresaw the disaster and demanded specie. Law, who 
had become comptroller-general, struggled desperately ; spe- 
cie payment was suspended; no one was allowed to have 
gold or silver in his house; there were prosecutions, domi- 
ciliary visits, and denunciations. Law barely escaped being 
torn in pieces. Then by a sudden revulsion, the State, which 
a little while before had ]3roscribed coin, declared that it 
would receive no more payments in paper: this was the 
death-warrant of the system. Law escaped from France 
wholly impoverished (1720). It now remained to liquidate 
accounts. The public debt was found to be increased by 
nearly 13,000,000 of interest per annum. But the extinc- 
tion of a great number of offices, and the redemption of 
several alienated revenues, compensated for this increase. 
The State was left in about the same condition as that in 
which Law found it. 

Change in Manners and Ideas. — Such is the history of 
this famous system. It showed the power of credit; it 
gave industry and commerce an energetic impulse; it de- 
livered agriculture from the tithes on landed property, and 
from the arrears due on the taille. And, though it made 
sad ruin, it ameliorated the public fortune by a reduction of 
20,000,000 on taxation, and by a redistribution more favor- 
able to the lower classes. But while reversing the condi- 
tions and fortunes of men, it also accelerated the change 
already begun in manners and ideas. That court which sur- 
rounded Louis XW., with its grave and solemn aspect, had 
been dispersed. It could not be brought together again 
under a minor king, with a regent whose first thought was 
of pleasure and who cared little for etiquette or regal dig- 

Debauchery had, until then, kept within certain limits ; 
cynicism of manners as well as of thought was now adopted 
openly. The regent set the example. There had never 
been seen such frivolity of conduct nor such licentious wit 



486 MINORITY OF LOUIS XV. 

as that exhibited in the wild meetings of the roues of the 
Duke of Orleans. There had been formerly but one salon in 
France, that of the king; a thousand were now open to a 
society which, no longer occupied with religious questions, 
or with war, or the grave futilities of etiquette, felt that 
pleasure and change were necessities. The CEclipe of Vol- 
taire and the Lettres persanes of Montesquieu opened the 
fire upon the old regime. 

Pestilence in Marseilles (1720) . — During these Saturna- 
lia of file court a terrible scourge had desolated Provence, 
where the plague carried off 85,000 persons, and a famine 
succeeded the epidemic. 

Death of Dubois and the Duke of Orleans (1723). — Louis 
XV. attained his majority February 13, 1723, being then thir- 
teen years old. This terminated the regency of the Duke 
of Orleans. But the king was still to remain a long 
time under tutelage ; the duke, in order to retain the power 
after resigning the regency, had in advance given Dubois 
the title of prime minister. At the death of the wretched 
Dubois he took the office himself, but held it only foiir 
months, dying of apoplexy in December, 1723. France had 
been eight years in his hands ; the time had arrived for the 
outburst of the moral revolution prepared by the last years 
of Louis XIV. 



REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 487 



CHAPTER LVI. 

REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 

(1733-1774 A.D.) 

♦ 

Ministry of the Duke of Bourbon (1723-1726) . — The 

Duke of Bourbon, who became prime minister on the death 
of the regent, had scarcely better morals than those of his 
predecessor. But he manifested great harshness towards 
the Protestants and Jansenists. He renewed, he even aggra- 
vated, the severities of Louis XIV. Emigration recom- 
menced, as at the time of the revocation of the edict of 
Nantes ; and the government was constrained by the public 
outcry to mitigate some of its cruelties. 

The English ministry had continued to Madame de Prie, 
mistress of the Duke of Bourbon, the j)ension which it had, 
it is believed, granted to Dubois, and therefore the duke 
kept France in alliance with England. The regent had 
recently drawn closer to the cabinet of Madrid, and had 
asked for Louis XV. the hand of an infanta. The young 
princess, only four years old, was taken to Paris to be brought 
up. Such a marriage was advantageous for the house of 
Orleans ; for since it could not be solemnized for a long time, 
it would leave the throne long without an heir, and conse- 
quently o^Den to the first prince of the blood. But the new 
minister wished the king to take a wife who should owe 
everything to the minister, and should show her gratitude for 
his favor. Stanislas Leszczynski, the exiled king of Poland, 
was then living at Weissenljurg, on an income granted him 
by Prance. The prime minister chose for queen of France 
the daughter of Stanislas, the amiable and pious Marie 
Leszczynski, although she was seven years older than the 
king, very poor, without beauty, and already old in appear- 
ance. The infanta of Spain was sent home to her father : 
this was the second repudiation of the policy of Louis XIV. 
within ten years. 

Philip v., indignant at the insult, hastened to conclude 
with Austria the treaty of Vienna (1725). The king of 



488 REIGN OF LOUIS X7. 



Spain granted to the Austrian merchants of the Osten 
Company privileges which extended to all the ports of his 
domains, and guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction by which 
Charles assured the succession to his daughter, contrary to 
the custom of the Austrian dominions. In return, the em- 
peror engaged to assist Spain to recapture Gibraltar and 
Port Mahon ; he renewed the promises made in 1720 re- 
specting the duchies of Parma and Tuscany, and promised 
two archduchesses to the two infantes. 

Meanwhile Pleury took the place of the Duke of Bourbon. 
This ambitious, prudent man was bishop of Frejus when 
Louis XIV. appointed him preceptor to his grandson. The 
amiable and witty old man gained the entire confidence of his 
pupil, and could have been prime minister at once upon the 
death of the regent ; but he did not wish to take the posi- 
tion immediately. Yet he neglected nothing which could 
render him dear and indispensable to the king. The duke, 
on the contrary, brought himself into discredit. The re-es- 
tablishment of antiquated taxes, long unused, was disap- 
proved of. There was dissatisfaction also at others of his 
measures, and especially at an attempt toward uniform 
taxation of land. This time it was not the people only, but 
the privileged classes who were threatened. There was 
such an olitcry that the ministry went down before it. One 
day the king, on setting out for Eambouillet, said to the 
duke, in a gracious tone, " Cousin, do not keep me waiting 
at supper." The same evening a lieutenant of the body- 
guards condiicted the duke to Chantilly (1726). 

Ministry of Fleury (1726-1743); Internal Affairs; the 
Convulsionnaires. — Thus the septuagenarian bishop of 
Prejus, who shortly after became cardinal, rose to power. 
He refused the title of prime minister, took only that of 
minister of State, and roused the king to declare that he 
would himself take charge of the government. But in fact, 
Louis contented himself with showing to the council board 
his handsome and perfectly impassive face. Beyond that, 
when he was neither gambling nor hunting, he made tapes- 
try, turned snuff-boxes out of wood, or read with equal 
interest the secret correspondence which he maintained with 
his ambassadors, unknown to his ministers, or the scanda- 
lous anecdotes which the lieutenant of police sent him 
regularly each day. Pleury did the work of the govern- 
ment alone, but he did it modestly and quietly. He let 



I 



REIGN OF LOUIS XY. 489 

France repair her losses undisturbed, and enrich herself by 
an immense commerce, treating the State as a powerful and 
robust body which could take care of itself. The people were 
so tired of political and financial breaknecks, that this senile 
minister, this government which governed as little as possi- 
ble, was almost popular, and lasted seventeen years. Fleury 
set up for his aim, peace and economy. He won the blessings 
of the people by certain reductions of taxation. He restored 
the public credit, re-established for the time the balance 
between receipts and expenditures, and constructed roads. 
Still, to leave industry and commerce to themselves, was a 
good policy only in case they were free ; and besides, he 
allowed the French marine to go to ruin. 

Nor was Fleury tolerant. He set again in operation the 
bull Unigenitus ; he imprisoned several ecclesiastics who 
refused to sign it, removed the Jansenist professors of the 
Sorbonne, and cancelled a protest of the Parliament. Later, 
he exiled forty of its members, and soon after recalled them 
for fear of some disturbance (1730), so that Parliament, em- 
boldened, allowed the spirit of opposition again to enter the 
sanctuary of the laws. In 1727 an ascetic Jansenist deacon 
died in the odor of sanctity. It was soon reported that 
he had worked miracles ; persons who stretched themselves 
on the tomb of the deacon felt convulsions, or nervous trem- 
blings, sometimes injurious, sometimes beneficial. There 
were scenes both extravagant and scandalous ; but the gov- 
ernment had the wisdom not to interfere. 

Foreign Affairs ; Reconciliation with Spain (1726-1731). 
— The Duke of Bourbon had bequeathed to his successor a 
quarrel with Spain, then allied to Austria, which obliged 
France to continue in alliance with England. Sir E-obert 
Walpole, the principal counsellor of George II., agreed with 
Fleury in desiring peace. The war between the two leagues 
had had no other effect than a fruitless attack of the 
Spaniards upon Gibraltar in 1727. Fleury stopped it the 
same year. In 1731, at the death of the last Duke of Parma 
and Piacenza, the infante Don Carlos was put in possession 
of those states. The emperor withdrew his opposition only 
after the powers had accepted his Pragmatic Sanction. A 
good understanding was now re-established between the 
courts of Madrid and Vienna. 

War of the Polish Succession (1733-1735). —The death 
of Augustus II., king of Poland, disturbed this peace. The 



490 REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 

succession to him was claimed by Stanislas Leszczynski, and 
by the Elector of Saxony, whom the Russians and Austrians 
supported as candidate. Fleury would willingly have taken 
no part in this quarrel, but public opinion obliged him to 
sustain the father of the queen. He, however, was so slow 
in making his decision, that Augustus III., crowned at 
Cracow, forced Stanislas to take refuge in Danzig, where 
the Russians besieged him. Fleury sent fifteen hundred 
men to aid the candidate of France. They made brave ef- 
forts to raise the siege, but were finally forced to capitulate. 

Public opinion forced Fleury to attempt retaliation for 
the treaties of Utrecht. He concluded with Spain and 
Savoy a treaty which promised to the king of Sardinia the 
Milanese, and to the Bourbons of Spain the kingdom of 
Naples for the infante Don Carlos. Securing the neutrality 
of England and Holland, he sent two armies, one to the 
Rhine, the other to Italy, commanded by the old marshals 
Berwick and Villars (1733). The first took Kehl, in spite 
of Prince Eugene, laid siege to Philippsburg, and was killed 
in battle. Villars, after two brilliant campaigns, died at 
Turin. His successors gained victories which delivered the 
Milanese into the hands of the French, and installed the 
infante on the throne of Naples and Sicily. This was a 
glorious revival for France ; but the timidity of the cardinal 
hindered her from reaping the fruits of her victories. A 
complete renunciation of Italy could have been required of 
the emperor, and the independence of the peninsula could 
have been restored : but he was only compelled to give up 
the Two Sicilies, and compensated by the cession of Parma 
and Piacenza for himself and by having Tuscany given to 
his son-in-law in exchange for Lorraine. A supplementary 
clause assigned to Stanislas, as compensation for the throne 
of Poland, Lorraine and Bar, which, at his death, were to 
revert to France. 

These conditions formed the treaty of Vienna (1735- 
1738). This was the most brilliant period of the ministry 
of Fleury. "After the peace of Vienna," says Frederick 
the Great, " France was the arbiter of Europe. Her armies 
had triumphed in Italy as well as in Germany. Her min- 
ister at Constantinople, the Count of Villeneuve, had con- 
cluded the peace of Belgrade, the last glorious treaty that 
Turkey ever signed, and which gave to h-er Servia, a part 
of Wallachia, and Belgrade." 



REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 491 

War of the Austrian Succession (1741-1748).— In 1740 
the emperor Charles VI. died. In order to assure his 
hereditary possessions to his daughter, Maria Theresa, he 
had obtained from all the European states, at great sacri- 
fices, a solemn recognition of his Pragmatic Sanction, and 
he left to Maria Theresa an ample collection of parchments. 
" An army of two hundred thousand men," says Frederick 
II., " would have been more valuable." He had scarcely ex- 
pired when five claimants came forward. The Elector of 
Bavaria, the king of Spain, the Elector of Saxony, claimed 
the entire heritage by right of blood ; the king of Sardinia 
claimed the dnchy of Milan, and the king of Prussia, Fred- 
erick II., four dnchies in Silesia. Frederick II. had not a 
large kingdom, but his father had left him a rich treasury 
and a fine army, and nature had given him the rarest 
talents. He began by laying hold upon what he claimed. 
The battle of MoUwitz put him in possession of three- 
fourths of Silesia (1741). 

Alliance with Frederic II. — The Count of Belle-Isle pro- 
posed in the French council an alliance with Prussia, and a 
plan which restricted Maria Theresa to Hungary, Lower 
Austria, and Belgium, and divided the rest among the 
claimants ; the Elector of Bavaria was to be emperor. 
France took nothing for herself. It was thought that the 
abasement of Austria would be the elevation of France, and 
that by dividing Eastern Germany, France would be relieved 
of all anxiety on the Phine. This plan was adopted in 
opposition to the opinion of Fleury, and the treaty of 
Nymphenburg was concluded upon this basis (1741). 

Bohemian Campaign ; Defection of Frederick II. ; Death 
of Fleury (1741-1743) . — France put into the field an army 
of only forty thousand men, and sent it into the heart of 
Bavaria. Capturing Linz, the principal barrier of Austria 
on the upper Danube, the Elector of Bavaria might have 
seized Vienna ; but preferred to conquer Bohemia. Maria 
Theresa had time to arouse her faithful Hungarians ; while 
the elector was being crowned emperor at Frankfort, the 
Austrians entered Munich (January, 1742). Frederick 
threatened Moravia, and defeated the Austrians at Chotusitz 
in Bohemia (May) ; but Maria Theresa was wise enough to 
make sacrifices in season : she gave up Silesia to him. Upon 
this condition, Frederick set aside the promise he had made 
to France. 



492 REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 

This defection influenced otliers. The Elector of Saxony 
withdrew from the war ; the king of Sardinia joined in it 
on the side of Austria. England, which had just overturned 
the pacific ministry of Walpole (February, 1742), and 
exacted a war against Spain because the latter refused to 
open her colonies to English trade, now loudly demanded 
war against France, whose commerce was increasing enor- 
mously. She promised Maria Theresa a subsidy of eight 
million francs, and fell upon the Erehch ships everywhere. 
France had taken up arms for the benefit of others, and now 
the whole weight of the contest was about to fall upon her 
alone. 

The French army in Bohemia had already been cut off by 
the Austrians ; they even besieged it in Prague. Fleury 
spoiled everything by his timidity. Maillebois was operating 
in Franconia, but he could do nothing for the deliverance of 
Prague except to seize upon Eger. Along the line of retreat 
thus afforded, Belle-Isle, leaving Prague with fourteen thou- 
sand men, made, through the ice, the snow, and the enemy, a 
glorious but painful retreat. Soon after, Fleury died at the 
age of eighty-nine. Two new ministers — in the war depart- 
ment, the Count of Argenson (1743) ; in the dex3artment of 
finance, De Machault (1745) — conducted with wisdom the 
affairs committed to their charge. 

Dettingen (1743); Defection of Bavaria (1745). — England 
had joined the contest; fifty thousand English and Ger- 
mans arrived in the valley of the Main ; Marshal iSToailles 
hemmed them in at Dettingen, but the foolish impetuosity 
of the Duke of Gramont frustrated these skilful combina- 
tions, and there was only a bloody defeat instead of a victory. 
De Broglie, who commanded the army of the Danube, was 
forced to fall back before the Austrians as far as the Ehine, 
and ISToailles was compelled also to retreat (1743). In order 
to retrieve their fortunes, it was considered necessary to put 
the king at the head of the armies. A new favorite, the 
Duchess of Ch^teauroux, an energetic and ambitious woman, 
endeavored to arouse him from his torpor. A serious illness 
detained him at Metz. At the news of his recovery the 
churches rendered thanks to God for having restored " Louis 
the Well-beloved " (1744) . How easy was the task for a 
royalty which was still so popular ! 

Meanwhile the king of Prussia, alarmed at the progress 
of Austria and her alliance with Eussia, again took up 



REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 493 

arms, and penetrated into Bohemia as far as Prague. TMs 
diversion disengaged tlie line of the Rhine. The emperor 
Charles VII. returned to his electorate, but only to die. His 
son made a treaty with Maria Theresa, and renounced all 
pretension to the Austrian succession (1745). 

Marshal Saxe ; Fontenoy (1745) . — France had no longer 
any object in the war ; but it was necessary to conquer peace. 
She sought it in the Netherlands. . Marshal Saxe, a natural 
son of the king of Poland, invested Tournai ; fifty-five thou- 
sand English and Dutch, under the command of the Duke 
of Cumberland, approached the town. The marshal decided 
to offer a defensive battle. He took up a strong position at 
Pontenoy. At the beginning of the battle (May 11, 1745) 
the English and Dutch attacks were repulsed; then the 
Duke of Cumberland massed his infantry in single column 
so as to pierce the centre of the French line. The English 
advanced slowly, as if upon parade. They outflanked Fon- 
tenoy. Ten regiments successively charged against this long 
column, immovable on account of its mass and its bravery, 
but were repulsed. The battle seemed endangered; the 
marshal prepared to retreat, but seeing the English column 
halt for a moment, he ordered a general attack on its flank. 
The column, surrounded, bent under the shock, opened, 
shivered ; from that moment its strength was broken. The 
severed battalions fled hastily to the reserve. The allies had 
lost twelve thousand or fourteen thousand men ; the French, 
more than seven thousand. This was a great victory, and 
had important results. Tournai, Ghent, the general depot 
of the enemy, Oudenarde, Brussels, Dendermonde, and 
Ostend capitulated. At the beginning of the following year 
the French entered Brussels. 

Second Defection of Prussia; Reverses in Italy (1745- 
1746). — The victories of Hohenfriedberg and Kesseldorf 
having thrown Saxony and Dresden open to the king of 
Prussia, he signed at Dresden a new treaty with Maria The- 
resa, which confirmed the cession of Silesia. This defection 
left the French without an ally in Germany ; the defeat of 
the Pretender, Charles Stuart, at Culloden (1746), prevented 
a revolution in England. Maria Theresa and George II., 
freed from all anxiety, the one with regard to Prussia, the 
other on account of the Jacobites, infused renewed vigor 
into the hostilities. Maria Theresa sought to indemnify 
herself in Italy. The French and Spanish army had been 



494 REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 

gaining some successes there, but now tile victory of Pia- 
cenza (1746) and the defection of Spain gave to the Im- 
perialists all the northern part of the peninsula. The 
English, Austrians, and Sardinians attempted an invasion of 
Provence, but were compelled by Belle-Isle to retreat. 

Raucoux and Lawfeld (1746-1747). — In the south, accord- 
ingly. Prance did nothing but defend her frontier ; but in 
the north she had brilliant success. The battle of Eaucoux, 
won by Marshal Saxe, marked the year 1746. Louis, after 
each victory, demanded nothing but peace, "not wishing," 
he said, ''to negotiate like a merchant, but like a king." 
This unusual disinterestedness was suspected, and Holland, 
alarmed at seeing the French at her gates, re-established the 
stadtholderate as in 1672. The czarina Elizabeth (1747) 
placed at the disposal of the enemies of Prance fifty Rus- 
sian ships and thirty-seven thousand men, who set out for 
the Ehine. Prance alone, facing all obstacles, was still 
advancing in the Netherlands, peace in one hand, and the 
sword in the other. Marshal Saxe won the battle of Law- 
feld (1747), and the "impregnable" Bergen-op-Zoom was 
taken. Holland was invaded. In 1748 Saxe invested 
Maastricht. 

Naval Operations ; La Bourdonnais and Dupleix. — The 
naval war between England and Prance had begun in 1744, 
with an indecisive action at Toulon. Brest and Toulon 
were blockaded by the English, and Antibes bombarded. 
Prance could not, with thirty-five shi]3S-of-the-line, cope 
with one hundred and ten. Her chiefs of squadrons at least 
made defeat honorable by their heroic courage. " In this 
war," says an English historian, "England owed her vic- 
tories only to the number of her vessels." In America, the 
English captured Louisburg and Cape Breton (1745). 

In the Indies, Prance had two distinguished leaders, — La 
Bourdonnais and Dupleix ; if they could have acted in con- 
cert, and if they had been properly supported, they would 
have won Hindustan for France. The first had established 
everything in Bourbon (Eeunion) and the Isle de Prance 
(Mauritius), of which he was governor for the India Com- 
pany, — cultivation, arsenals, fortifications. An engineer, a 
general, and a sailor, he stopped at nothing ; and from Mau- 
ritius, which, with its excellent harbor, had become the key 
to the Indian Ocean, he sailed about over that sea and drove 
the English from it. Dupleix endeavored to drive them 



REIGN OF LOUIS XV, 495 

from the mainland of Asia ; but the two quarrelled, and La 
Bourdonnais, recalled to France, was, on his arrival, shut up 
in the Bastile. Dupleix made a gallant defence of Pondi- 
cherry and gave the English a blow which was felt even in 
Europe. Peace was then for France as inopportune in India 
as in the Netherlands ; but her navy was reduced to two 
vessels, and her debt had increased by 1,200,000,000 livres. 

Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). — The peace signed at 
Aix-la-Chapelle in April, 1748, stipulated for mutual resti- 
tution of conquests. England recovered for four years the 
asiento (the right to import negroes into the Spanish colo- 
nies), and limited rights of trade with them; Austria ceded 
Parma and Piacenza to the infante Don Philip, Silesia to 
the king of Prussia, and several places in the Milanese to 
the king of Sardinia. Prance gave up Madras, and recovered 
possession of Cape Breton ; but she kept nothing in the 
Netherlands, almost all of which she had occupied, and 
agreed to expel the Pretender from France. Marshal Saxe 
survived this treaty only a short time. 

Commercial Prosperity. — The eight years which followed 
this peace formed the most prosperous period of French 
commerce in the eighteenth century. Lorient, which in 
1726 was only a small market-town, had, in 1733, had imports 
to the value of eighteen millions. Bourbon became a great 
agricultural colony. Dupleix sought to establish in India 
a vast colonial empire. Guadeloupe, Martinique, and espe- 
cially San Domingo, reached a degree of prosperity which 
was reflected upon all the merchant towns of the mother 
country, upon ISTantes, Bordeaux, and Marseilles, which had 
in addition all the trade of the Levant. The sugar and 
coffee of the French Antilles drove out from the European 
market the similar products of the English colonies, and 
Louisiana began to flourish. 

The last maritime war had only suspended this movement ; 
as soon as the war was over it resumed its course with an 
energy which was seconded by the government itself ; for 
in spite of the inactivity of Louis XY., and the wretched 
influence of Madame de Pompadour, the increasing strength 
of public opinion forced upon the government certain men 
and certain tendencies. The Marquis of Argenson had been 
called, in 1744, to the ministry of foreign affairs, and that 
of marine was given to EouilM and De Machault, who made 
praiseworthy efforts to re-establish a navy. England, though 



496 REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 

her navy was much, larger, was nevertheless alarmed at this 
revival of French naval power, and especially at the prog- 
ress of French commerce ; and easily found cause for a 
quarrel. 

Causes of the Renewal of War. — France had two magnih- 
cent possessions in America, — Canada and Louisiana ; that 
is to say, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, the two 
greatest rivers of eastern ISTorth America, which she thus 
held at both ends. But the boundaries of Acadia had not 
been determined, neither had it been determined whether 
Ohio belonged to Louisiana (France) or to Virginia (Eng- 
land). Also, both countries claimed Tobago. Commission- 
ers were appointed to decide the question. They could 
come to no conclusion, and the colonies, drawing the Indians 
into their quarrels, began hostilities. Washington, then 
very yoinig, surprised and killed, with part of his escort, a 
French officer named Jumonville, who was carrying to the 
English an order to evacuate the valley of the Ohio. This 
was the first blood shed in this war (May, 1754). Then, 
without a declaration of war, the English seized more than 
three hundred merchant vessels loaded with a cargo of 
30,000,000 livres, and having on board 10,000 sailors, the 
greater part of whom they enlisted in their crews. War 
had begun. 

Reversal of Alliances. — The English ministry, thanks to 
its gold, again let loose continental war. Prussia joined 
England ; Maria Theresa, who had an implacable resentment 
against Prussia, proposed an alliance to the cabinet of Ver- 
sailles in order to recover Silesia. The treaty of Versailles 
(1756), entirely advantageous to Austria, reunited the two 
powers. The czarina Elizabeth, Sweden, and Saxony ac- 
ceded to it. Thus Austria became the friend of France, the 
enemy of England, her old ally, and France was about to 
attack Prussia. The whole system of European alliances 
was changed. 

The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) ; Conquest of Minorca 
(1756). — France, forced to fight with both hands, dealt at 
once a vigorous blow. She sent first against Minorca, then 
in the possession of the English, a squadron which defeated 
the fleet of Admiral Byng, and an army commanded by 
Kichelieu, which captured the fortress of Port Mahon, 
hitherto considered impregnable. 

Difficult Position of the King of Prussia. — The king of 



BEIQN OF LOUIS XV. 497 

Prussia, as usual, anticipated tlie action of his enemies. He 
surrounded the Saxons in their camp of Pirna, repulsed the 
Austrians at Lobositz, then absorbed the whole Saxon army. 
Prance sent two armies into the field during this campaign ; 
one under Marshal d'Estr^es into Westphalia, the other 
under Soubise towards the Main. Frederick would not 
have been able to defend himself against this formidable 
coalition if his allies had acted at all in concert. He had 
in his favor also the unskilfulness and carelessness of the 
I'rench generals, Soubise and Richelieu, and the slowness of 
Daun, the Austrian commander-in-chief. He re-entered 
Bohemia, and won the bloody battle of Prague (1757). 
Defeated in turn at Kollin by Daun (1757), he was forced to 
retreat. In the east, the Eussians took Memel from him, 
and beat one of his lieutenants at Gross-Jagerndorf ; in the 
west, D'Estr^es conquered Hanover, and another French 
army marched rapidly iipon Magdeburg and Saxony. Thus 
the circle of enemies by whom Frederick was surrounded 
pressed upon him more closely each day (1757). He asked 
for peace. Believing him to be in extremity, they refused 
it. He took refuge in his indomitable energy. 

Capitulation of Kloster-Zeven (1757). — Eichelieu, who 
succeeded D'Estr^es in the command of the army of Han- 
over, entirely surrounded the Duke of Cumberland in a cul- 
de-sac ; but, instead of taking him prisoner, agreed to the 
capitulation of Kloster-Zeven, which the English govern- 
ment afterwards disavowed. 

Rossbach (1757); Krefeld (1758). — Soubise, the favorite 
of Madame de Pompadour, had joined the forces which 
had been raised by the Empire to sustain Maria Theresa, 
and was marching upon Saxony. Frederick hastened from 
Silesia to the Saale : he had only twenty thousand men with 
which to oppose fifty thousand. He established himself at 
the village of Eossbach, concealing his cavalry and artillery. 
The allies advanced rashly and in disorder. Suddenly the 
Prussian artillery was unmasked and opened fire ; their 
cavalry dashed upon the right flank of the army of Sou- 
bise ; the infantry followed ; the French and Germans were 
scattered in a few moments. The Prussians killed three 
thousand men, took seven thousand prisoners, captured 
sixty-three pieces of cannon, and lost only four hundred 
soldiers. 

Frederick, leaving Soubise to run away, turned against the 



498 REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 

Austrians, drove them from Saxony, to which they had 
returned, and followed them into Silesia, which he again 
took from them (1757). Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, 
just at this time became prime minister of England, and 
decided that country to make greater efforts in behalf of 
her ally. The king, in exchange for the numerous subsidies 
which Pitt caused to be voted him, sent one of his lieuten- 
ants, Ferdinand of Brunswick, to take command of the 
Hanoverian army, which, violating its parole, again took the 
field. The French retreated before this skilful general, 
recrossing the Weser, the Ems, and the Ehine, and were 
again defeated at Krefeld (1758). 

Disorder in the French Armies and in the Administration. 
— All the generals whom Madame de Pompadour placed at 
the head of armies were perfectly incompetent. Moreover, 
the quarrels of the court were continued in the camps, and 
several were accused of causing plans to fail and losing 
battles in order to ruin a rival. The armies, badly organ- 
ized, were still more badly managed. Since women rviled 
the government, the higher part of the administration was 
given over to tlie most disorderly caprices. From 1755 to 
1763 twenty-five ministers were appointed and displaced, 
" tumbling one after the other," writes Voltaire, " like the 
figures of a magic lantern." Plans were changed as fast as 
men. 

Energy of the King of Prussia (1758-1762). —After Eoss- 
bach and Krefeld the French generals were given forces 
superior to those of the enemy and so gained occasional 
successes in Western Germany (1758-1760). But in gen- 
eral, in the western part of Germany, the only result of the 
war was the devastation of the country. In the south and 
east Frederick himself confronted the Russians, who took 
Konigsberg from him, but whom he conquered at Zorndorf 
(1758), and the Austrians, who, at Hochkirch in Lusatia, 
killed ten thousand of his men. The Russians revenged 
themselves the following year at Kunersdorf, where twenty 
thousand men on each side were left upon the field of battle, 
and Frederick would have found himself in a critical posi- 
tion if his adversaries had known how to take advantage 
of their victory. The brilliant success of Prince Ferdinand 
at Minden (August, 1759) raised his hopes. He defeated 
Laudon at Liegnitz, delivered his capital, surprised by 
the Russians and Austrians, forced Daun into a dangerous 



REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 499 

position near Torgau, and remained master of two-thirds of 
Saxony, while his lieutenants foiled the plans of the Swedes 
and French in the north and west. 

But these " Herculean labors " had exhausted the strength 
of the king and his people. He held himself on the defen- 
sive during the whole of the campaign of 1761. Happily 
for him the czarina Elizabeth died at the beginning of 
1762, and Peter III. at once declared the neutrality of 
Eussia : Sweden withdrew from the struggle. Freed from 
danger on the east and north, Frederick recovered Silesia 
and made gains in Saxony. 

French Reverses on the Sea and in the Colonies. — France 
had maintained the war on the continent not too unsuccess- 
fully and without sacrificing the national territory, but also 
without much honor. On the sea she was contending with 
an enemy whose overwhelming superiority allowed her 
sailors the hope of but few victories. While England 
lavished all her care upon the navy, the French government 
left its colonies without ships, soldiers, or money, and 
unfortunate divisions weakened discipline. The English 
blockaded the French ports, and not a ship went out which 
did not fall into their hands ; thirty-seven ships of the line 
and fifty-six frigates also were taken, or burned, or perished 
on the reefs. The descents made by the English on the 
coasts of ISTormandy and Brittany showed that the terri- 
tory of France could be violated with impunity, since her 
fleet no longer protected her shores. The whole Atlantic 
coast of France, from Dunkirk to Bayonne, was as it were 
besieged. 

Dupleix had been recalled in 1754 ; if France had sent 
him money and good soldiers, India would perhaps now be 
French and not English. Lally, his brave successor, could 
not hinder the English, commanded by the able Lord Clive, 
from getting the upper hand. In his turn he was besieged 
in Pondicherry, where, with seven hundred men, he defended 
himself nine months against twenty-two thousand. The 
English, finally masters of the city, drove out the inhabi- 
tants and razed it to the ground : this was the death-blow 
to the French power in India. 

In Canada the Marquis of Montcalm captured Forts On- 
tario and William Henry, bulwarks of the English posses- 
sions (1756, 1757). But in 1759 he had only five thousand 
soldiers with which to oppose forty thousand, and the colo- 



500 REIGN OF LOUIS XY. 



nies were in want of provisions, powder, and shot. The 
enemy besieged Quebec ; Montcalm gave battle in order to 
save the city, and was mortally wounded, as was also the 
victorious English general Wolfe. Montcalm's successor, 
Vaudreuil, struggled for some time, but Canada was lost, and 
Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, Grenada, St. Vincent, 
St. Lucia, and Tobago were also lost. 

Choiseul; the Family Compact (1761). — An able minister 
at this time acquired the greatest influence in the affairs of 
France, the Duke of Choiseul. Madame de Pompadour had 
recalled him from the embassy at Vienna to give him, in 
1758, the portfolio of foreign affairs, which he exchanged in 
1761 for tha-t of war. Two years later he received in addi- 
tion that of the navy, and had that of foreign affairs bestowed 
upon his cousin, the Duke of Praslin. Choiseul preserved 
the Austrian alliance, but he also formed another. He 
wished to gather together, as in a sheaf, all the branches of 
the house of Bourbon established in Prance, in Spain, in the 
Two Sicilies, and in Parma and Piaceuza, securing to France 
the useful support of the Spanish navy. This treaty, famous 
under the name of the Family Compact, was signed in Au- 
gust, 1761. England immediately declared war against 
Spain, and wrested from her Manilla, the Philippines, 
Havana, twelve ships of the line, and prizes valued at 
100,000,000 francs. 

Treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg (1763). — The Euro- 
pean powers were now weary of war. France had for her 
part of it spent 1,350,000,000. England had attained her 
end, the destruction of the French merchant and military 
marine; and her public debt was increasing enormously. 
Prussia was only kept on her feet by the energy of her 
king. Austria despaired of recovering Silesia. France and 
England signed preliminaries which resulted, in February, 
1763, in the treaty of Paris. England acquired Canada, 
Acadia, Cape Breton, Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vincent, 
Dominica, Tobago, Senegal, and Minorca. France retained 
the right of fishing on the coasts of Newfoundland and in 
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with the islands of St. Pierre 
and Miquelon ; she recovered Guadeloupe, Marie Galante, 
Desirade, and Martinique, and obtained St. Lucia. In the 
East Indies, Pondicherry and a few other settlements were 
retained, on condition that she should send no troops there. 
As Spain, while recovering Cuba and Manilla, gave up 



1 



REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 501 

Florida to England, France compensated her for it by the 
cession of Louisiana. " The war," said Frederick II., " had 
begun on account of two or three wretched huts ; the Eng- 
lish gained by it two thousand leagues of territory, and 
humanity lost a million of men." The treaty of Hubertus- 
burg, between Maria Theresa and Frederick II., confirmed 
the latter in the possession of Silesia. 

Political and Military Decline of France. — The Seven 
Years' War had been undertaken for the ruin of the king of 
Prussia ; he came out of it victorious, and a new state took 
its place among the powers of Europe. As for France, the 
war had shown the incapacity of her generals, the lack of 
discipline among her soldiers, and with a few happy excep- 
tions, the weakening of the military qualities of the nation. 
On the sea it was more than a decline ; her ruin was com- 
plete. 

Efforts of Choiseul; Acquisition of Corsica (1768) and 
Lorraine (1766). — Choiseul, a patriotic but not a great 
minister, earnestly desired to raise France from the degra- 
dation into which she had fallen. He tried to reorganize 
the army. He resumed, with energy, the excellent work of 
Machault for the creation of a fleet. Corsica, now in revolt 
against the Genoese, its former masters, was occupied, con- 
quered, and united to the French territory (1768) ; it was 
in 1769 that Napoleon was born there, just in time to be 
born a Frenchman. Three years before, the death of Stan- 
islas had led to the union of Lorraine with France. These 
were not glorious, but useful acquisitions. Choiseul also 
prepared that union of the navies of second-rate powers 
which was destined, a few years later, to become the league 
of the armed neutrality against the English. He restrained 
Austria from encroachment in Italy, tried to fortify the 
Swedish government against the intrigues of E-ussia, and 
extended a friendly hand to Poland. 

Suppression of the Order of the Jesuits (1762-1764). — An 
important act of the administration of Choiseul, although 
it did not originate entirely with him, was the suppression 
of the Jesuits. This powerful society had spread in every 
direction. After having struggled energetically in the six- 
teenth century against Protestantism, and directed and 
ruled the Catholic world in the seventeenth, it had allowed 
to grow up within it those abuses which are developed by 
prosperity too long continued. Pascal, under Louis XIV., 



502 REIGN OF LOUIS XY. 

had attacked, in the Lettres provindales, the lax morality 
of the Jesuit casuists, and bequeathed to the Jansenists, 
who filled the magistracy, the care of continuing the con- 
test. The Parliaments had long been suspicious of spiritual 
soldiery whose attachments were not to France, and the 
philosophers rejoiced at every blow struck against them. 
Great hatred had sprung up against them throughout 
Europe. In 1717 they had been driven from Russia, and 
they had just been banished from Portugal (1759). The 
failure (for three millions) of P6re Lavalette, prefect of the 
mission to the Antilles, who had mixed the affairs of com- 
merce with those of religion, made a still greater stir, and 
had important results. The interested parties brought 
action against the company before the Parliament. When 
the examination was over, the Parliament passed two 
decrees : one condemning to the flames many books written 
by the Jesuits ; and the other, receiving the appeal of the 
procureur-gen^ral against the constitutions of the society. 
The queen, the dauphin, a part of the court, and almost all 
the episcopate were for the Jesuits ; but Madame de Pom- 
padour, Choiseul, and the public were for the Parliament : 
they were triumphant. In August, 1761, the Parliament 
of Paris declared the institution, by its very nature, inad- 
missible in any well-governed state, "as being a political 
body which tends to an absolute independence and a usur- 
pation of all authority." The Jesuits were forced to quit 
their colleges and houses within a week. A royal declara- 
tion of November, 1764, suppressed the society. Spain and 
Naples followed this example (1766) ; Parma did the same 
in 1768. Finally, even the Holy See was forced to yield to 
the persistent demands of the Catholic powers, and Clement 
XIV. solemnly proclaimed, in 1773, the sup]3ression of the 
Company of Jesus throughout Christendom. They num- 
bered then twenty thousand, of whom four thousand were 
in France. 

Disgrace of Choiseul (1770). — Choiseul had many ene- 
mies. The Jesuits had left behind them a powerful party. 
The dauphin, their pupil, was very hostile to the minister. 
The Duke of Aiguillon, the chancellor, Maup^ou, the abb6 
Terray, comptroller of the finances, formed against him a 
triumvirate which would have been powerless without the 
shameful auxiliary whom they selected. Madame de Pom- 
padour died in 1765, and had been succeeded by the Countess 



BEIGN OF LOUIS XV. 503 

du Barry, whose very presence was a stain upon Versailles. 
The Duke of Choiseul refused to yield to her disreputable 
influence. She swore his ruin and beset the king to pro- 
cure it. The triumvirate urged her on and furnished her 
with arguments. Choiseul, the king was told, was the chief 
of the philosophers, the friend of Parliaments ; he thought 
only of war, and the king thought only of peace. The 
cabal finally triumphed, and in 1770 Choiseul was banished 
to his estates. 

Destruction of the Parliaments (1771). — During the whole 
century the parliaments had manifested a spirit of opposi- 
tion to the court, to ultramontane pretensions, and to the 
increased taxation, which had not always been creditable 
nor well considered, especially in matters of religion, as in 
the case of the bull Unigenitus, for instance. The govern- 
ment had accepted this bull as a law of the State, but the 
Jansenists rejected it; they were sustained by the members 
of the parliaments. The archbishop of Paris, Christophe 
de Beaumont, forbade the priests of his diocese to admin- 
ister the communion to any one who was not furnished with 
a certificate of confession attesting that he had recognized 
the bull, and the sacraments were accordingly, in certain 
instances, refused. The Parliament was roused ; it caused 
•the bishop's excommunication to be burned ; it ordered the 
seizure of the temporalities of the archbishop of Paris, and 
it took measures to force the priests to administer the com- 
munion to the sick (1752). 

The magistrates, though once banished (1753), showed 
equal boldness on their return. The Parliament tried to 
form, with the other parliaments of the kingdom, a great 
body sufficiently strong on account of its union to play the 
part of permanent States-General, in defiance of the royal 
power. The king ordered the magistrates to confine them- 
selves to their ordinary duties : a hundred and eighty 
handed in their resignations. The turmoil in Paris was ex- 
treme. A wicked wretch named Francois Damiens became 
excited to the point of attempting the life of the king (1757). 
He wounded him only slightly, and was quartered for it. 
The trial of the Jesuits, in 1762, revived the quarrel ; an- 
other, in 1770, caused the struggle to break out. The Parlia- 
ment had rendered a decision against the Duke of Aiguillon, 
The king stopped the procedure. The magistrates protested 
against such interference. It was just at this juncture that 



504 REIGN OF LOUIS XV. J 

Choiseul was dismissed and liis place given to Aiguillon. 
Severe measures against Parliament at once followed. In 
the night of January 19th-20th, 1771, one hundred and 
sixty-nine magistrates were awakened by the arrival of two 
musketeers who enjoined upon them to sign, yes or no, a 
paper which informed them of an order to resume their 
duties. Thirty-eight signed yes, and retracted it the next 
day. The following night an officer signified to each of 
them the confiscation of their ofiices, and musketeers pre- 
sented them lettres de cachet, which banished them to differ- 
ent places. At the end of the year there were more than 
seven hundred magistrates in exile. Maup^ou then formed 
a new Parliament. 

The gravest element in the situation was that public 
opinion was at last deeply interested ; that the opposition 
made itself heard even about the throne; that all the 
princes of the blood, with one single exception, and thir- 
teen peers, protested " against the overthrow of the laws of 
the State " ; and, finally, that the formidable name of the 
States-General was pronaunced by the Parliaments of Tou- 
louse, Besan9on, Eouen, and even at Paris, by the court of 
aids. Soon, indeed, it would be necessary for the nation to 
assemble, but it would be for reconstruction ; for everything 
was shaking and trembling. Eichelieu and Louis XIV. had 
destroyed the political importance of the nobility. Louis 
XV. having destroyed the great body of the magistracy, 
what remained to support the old edifice and protect the 
monarch ? 

Famine Compact ; Lettres de Cachet ; Bankruptcy. — And 
each day the shame of this monarch increased. In 1773 
Austria, Prussia, and Eussia divided Poland among them- 
selves, and Prance was powerless to prevent this execution 
of a whole people. In 1768 the association wittily called 
the Famine Compact renewed its lease for the monopoly of 
grain, and thus created the artificial famines of 1768 and 
1769; the lettres de cachet were multiplied to a frightful 
extent, and thus the liberty of the citizens was placed in 
the hands of the rich and powerful who had a passion to 
satiate or a revenge to gratify. The abb6 Terray, forget- 
ting that an excessive taxation was ruinous to the treasury 
itself, changed the whole system of contribution in such a 
manner as to render the taxation overwhelming. Poverty 
increased, but the revenue did not, and bankruptcy was the 



REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 505 

only expedient he devised for reducing the debt of the 
State. In spite of all this, Terray allowed an annual deficit 
of 41,000,000 livres to remain. 

Meanwhile, since 1715, the taxes had more than doubled, 
having increased from 165,000,000 to 365,000,000. Louis 
XV. clearly foresaw that some terrible expiation was com- 
ing ; but in his selfishness, he consoled himself by thinking 
that the catastrophe would fall on some other head ; " Mat- 
ters will go on as they are as long as I live," said he ; " my 
successor may get out of the difficulty as well as he can." 
And Madame de Pompadour repeated with him, " After us, 
the deluge." 



506 CONDITION OF FRANCE 



CHAPTER LVII. 

CONDITION OF FRANCE AT THE END OF THE REIGN OF 
LOUIS XV. 

Spirit of Inquiry. — There had never been so earnest a 
desire for information of all sorts, or snch boldness in ven- 
turing beyond the beaten tracks, as was exhibited in this cen- 
tury. Men had long consoled themselves for abuses by an 
epigram, and for crimes by a song. But now the public mind 
was becoming more serious, and consequently more formi- 
dable. In the presence of a royalty which took pleasure in 
degrading itself, of nobles '^ who seemed to be only the ghosts 
of their ancestors," and were unable any longer to produce 
generals, of a clergy among whom were no longer found 
either Bossuets or F^nelons, privileges were questioned, the 
titles of those powers formerly respected were investigated. 

The principal work of royalty in modern society had been 
to establish territorial unity and governmental unity by the 
overthrow of feudalism. But conquered feudalism had left 
the land covered with ruins. Everywhere, in respect to 
both persons and things, there existed the most shocking 
inequalities and the strangest confusion. 

Powers of the Government Ill-Defined. — The constitution 
not being a written one, everything depended upon customs. 
Royalty was, in theory, an absolute power; it was not 
always so in fact, for numerous interests, powers, tradi- 
tions, and precedents formed an obstacle to it. !N"o one's 
rights were defined. The ministers set violent hands upon 
justice when they would, as the parliaments did upon the 
law. A royal edict was valid only after having been regis- 
tered by the parliaments, but the Council of State rendered 
governmental decrees, which dispensed with this formality. 
The clergy and the nobles had special tribunals ; the Third 
Estate had public functions which it had bought, and, so far 
as the greater number of offices were concerned, the king 
was deprived of the right of calling the best and most capa- 
ble men into the service of the State. 



AT THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 507 

Bad Administrative Organization. — There were six minis- 
ters : the chancellor, head of the department of justice, but 
who had little more than a title when he was not also 
keeper of the seals ; the comptroller-general of the finances, 
and the four secretaries of State, for the king's household, 
for war, for the navy, and for foreign affairs. These minis- 
ters presented a most singular confusion of functions. For 
instance, the governors and lieutenant-generals of prov- 
inces were not amenable to the minister of war, but the 
posts were amenable to him, and also Dauphiny and all the 
countries conquered since 1552. The minister of marine 
was at the same time minister of maritime commerce ; he 
had under him the consulates, and the chamber of com- 
merce at Marseilles, which of itself constituted a small min- 
istry for the commerce of the Levant. The minister of 
foreign affairs regulated pensions, and administered the 
provinces of Guienne, Normandy, Champagne, Berry, etc. 
The minister of the king's household had charge of ecclesi- 
astical affairs and lettres de cachet, of Languedoc, Paris, Pro- 
vence, Brittany, Navarre, etc. ; among the functions of the 
comptroller-general was the charge of bridges, hospitals, 
prisons, epidemics, domestic trade, and agriculture. Never- 
theless unity appeared for a moment every fortnight in the 
council of despatches, at which the king and all the ministers 
were present, and in which important decisions were made. 
As for the administrative divisions, there were as many of 
them as there were difficult administrations. Their circum- 
scriptions never agreed. One of the most deplorable prin- 
ciples of the administration was that of raising money by 
creating the most useless offices, which were of course per- 
manently burdensome to the public. 

Judicial Organization. — Thirteen parliaments and four 
provincial councils pronounced sovereign judgment in civil 
and criminal affairs ; more than three hundred baillis' or 
seneschals' courts pronounced judgment in the first instance. 
The public prosecutor, unknown to the ancients, existed, 
but there was no justice of the peace, such as the Rev- 
olution instituted. The parliaments had very unequal 
jurisdictions. That of the Parliament of Paris covered 
two-fifths of France. Besides, there were military and com- 
mercial courts, and also seignorial, ecclesiastical, and muni- 
cipal courts, and other courts of special jurisdiction. The 
chambers of accounts, the court of aids, and the court of 



508 CONDITION OF FRANCE 



4 



currencies judged all cases relative to taxes, currencies, 
and articles of gold and silver. 

Rigor of the Penal Code. — Tlie civil law confirmed mucli 
injustice, but the penal law commanded tortures before 
trial, and lavished with, frightful indifEerence mutilations, 
death, and the most atrocious punishments, without allow- 
ing the accused an advocate to plead for him, without per- 
mitting contentious pleadings, without even requiring of 
the judge that he should give au}^ reason for his decision. 
The slow and complicated proceedings, carried on in dark- 
ness and silence, sought less for truth than for a victim, and, 
regarding the prisoner as a criminal in advance, sometimes 
punished the innocent. For the same crime the peasant 
was punished much more severely than the noble. In vain 
had Voltaire made Lis eloquent protest against these de- 
plorable judicial errors resound throughout France and 
throughout Europe ; in vain had Beccaria's book expounded 
the true principles of criminal legislation ; Parliament re- 
fused every reform. The magistracy, honest and enlight- 
ened, was much better than the law ; but the law was 
such that it exposed to error the most conscientious judge, 
and caused the accused, however innocent, to tremble. 
Relics of mediaevalism survived ; the right of asylum existed 
even in Paris, in the enclosure of the Temple, and as late 
as 1718 the Parliament of Bordeaux had condemned a man 
to death for sorcery. The king still frequently pronounced 
sentence of imx^risonment or exile without trial, and often 
without limit, and many trials were stopped or called up by 
the grand council. 

Expensiveness of Justice ; Diversity of Laws. — The magis- 
trates, registrars, and ofiicers of justice were not paid by 
the king, or else were poorly paid; consequently they 
secured their pay from the litigants at prices set by them- 
selves. The proceedings were innumerable and endless, 
and the litigants were delivered over to the "robbery of 
justice." These exactions cost those suitors 40,000,000, or 
even 60,000,000 annually. The jurisdiction of the Parlia- 
ment of Paris extended in certain directions as far as one 
hundred and fifty leagues from the capital — another cause 
of ruin to litigants constrained to attend. 

Instead of a single law there were three hundred and four 
different customs, so that it happened that what was justice 
in one province was injustice in another ; and each parlia- 
ment had special regulations. 



AT THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 509 

Absence of Public Credit ; Maladministration of Finances. 

— Prance had no credit system, and still less with regard 
to the government than with regard to individuals. The 
most solemn promises having been violated a hundred times, 
the treasxiry obtained advances only by giving a pledge, and 
even with this disgraceful condition, it furthermore paid a 
usurious interest of twenty per cent, upon the advances of 
the farmers-general. The accounts were not made up until 
ten, twelve, and even fifteen years after the years to which 
they belonged, and were so unintelligible that no one, not 
even the minister, knew exactly what the State owed or 
what it ought to receive. Besides, since the time of Fran- 
cis I., the public treasury had been confounded with the pri- 
vate treasury of the j)rince, so that the king helped himself 
freely from the common fund. Louis XIV. took in this way, 
in one year, 180,000,000, which were expended mostly in 
payment for his pleasures or to his courtiers. In 1769, 
after six years of peace, the expenses exceeded the revenue 
by 100,000,000, and certain revenues were used up ten years 
in advance. 

Injurious Collection of the Public Taxes. — The taxes pre- 
sented the strangest confusion. The government did not 
realize all its receipts. The indirect taxes were rented to 
companies of farmers of the revenue and to sixty farmers- 
general, who, on the one hand, made the treasury pay them 
a usurious interest, and on the other understood how to 
increase their own receipts from the peoj)le. A certain tax 
levied under Louis XV. was given up to them for 23,000,000 ; 
they obtained from it 40,000,000. Scandalous fortunes were 
made by the farmers ; however, they were obliged to divide 
with the courtiers, assuring them of pensions or portions 
proportionate to their good offices. Great lords and great 
ladies received these degrading presents ; Louis XIV. him- 
self held out his hand for them. These farmers of the 
revenue had at their service a code so complicated that the 
tax-payers could not understand it, and so rigorous that, for 
the single offence of frauds in regard to salt, there were 
constantly seventeen hundred or eighteen hundred persons 
in the prisons, and more than three hundred in the galleys. 
The treasury was not more indulgent. 

Defects of the Military Organization. — The requirements 
for the effective force in times of peace called for 170,000 
men, of whom 131,000 were infantry, 31,000 cavalry, and 



510 CONDITION OF FRANCE 

8000 for the king's household ; but the real effective force 
did not amount to 140,000 men. There were not less than 
60,000 officers in the active service or on the retired list. 
Commissions were sold even in the special services, and the 
purchasers could, without having seen any service, become 
general officers. The Duke of Bouillon was colonel at eleven 
years of age, the Duke of Fronsac at seven. In spite of the 
reforms of Choiseul there was much waste in the army, and 
a bad system of enlistment spoiled its composition. The 
regular army was recruited by voluntary enlistments, the 
militia by lot which designated ten thousand men each year 
who were compelled to serve six years. But the drawing 
of lots for the militia was marked by the most scandalous 
abuses ; and if the volunteers made good soldiers, the recruit- 
ing-officers often sent to the regiments the dregs of the 
great cities ; consequently there were annually four thou- 
sand desertions to foreign countries. 

Ecclesiastical Administration. — The dioceses were very 
U-uequal : that of Rouen contained thirteen hundred and 
eighty-eight parishes ; those of Toulon and Orange, twenty. 
The revenues were like the dioceses. The bishop of Strass- 
burg had an income of five hundred thousand livres ; the 
bishop of Gap, eight thousand. A large number of abb6s 
had scarcely one thousand livres of revenue ; that of Fecamp 
could expend one hundred and twenty thousand; that of St. 
Germain nearly three times as much. Many curacies were 
very rich ; many vicars died of hunger. The king made 
apx^ointments to all positions of any importance in the 
Church; the bishops, the chapters, and the lay lords ap- 
pointed to the others. In a word, twelve thousand bishops, 
abbots, priors, and canons divided among them nearly a 
third of the revenues of the Church, more than 40,000,000 
(present value 66,000,000) : the remaining two-thirds suf- 
ficed for eight times as many priests and monks. 

Differences of Condition between Persons and between 
Provinces. — The three orders of the State — clergy, nobility 
and plebeians — were distinguished by privileges or burdens 
which made of the French people three different nations, 
each having its hierarchy and its distinct classes. Thus, 
there was the greater and the lesser nobility, — the one living 
at court and upon the national budget, the other in the 
provinces and on its own meagre revenues ; the upper and 



AT THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 511 

lower clergy, — the former ricli, tlie latter poor. Among the 
non-noble classes, fifty thousand families possessing heredi- 
tary offices of judicature formed a real aristocracy which 
did not mix with the financiers ; the middle class scorned 
the artisan, and the peasant at the bottom of the ladder, in 
poverty and ignorance, bore angrily all the weight of a society 
which was crushing him. In the family itself there was 
inequality : the right of primogeniture left to the younger 
sons of noble houses only their swords or the Church, and 
to many daughters only the convent. Besides these three 
orders there were the serfs, the Protestants, who had no 
civil rights, and the Jews. 

Some provinces, the pays d'JEtat, such as Languedoc, Bur- 
gundy, Brittany, and Artois, still possessed a shadow of lib- 
erty in the management of their affairs ; the others, pays 
d'^lection, were under the absolute direction of the court; 
and the latter paid taxes that the former did not pay, 
or paid in a lesser proportion. Lorraine, the Trois-]^vech4s 
and Alsace had no custom-houses between them and foreign 
lands. Others were surrounded by them on all sides. In 
1789 there were still in existence in the South of France 
twelve hundred leagues of lines of internal custom-houses, 
and the same measure of salt could be boiight in one place 
for six livres, and in another for sixty-two. The tax of the 
twentieth was less burdensome in Lorraine, Alsace, and 
Franche-Comt6 than in other provinces ; Lorraine was not 
even subject to capitation tax ; so that old France was bur- 
dened more heavily than the new France that she had con- 
quered. And all this, without speaking of the privileges of 
localities, corporations, and persons. 

Inequality with Regard to Public Functions. — Two 
classes of nobility divided between them all government 
positions. The "nobility of the sword" held all ranks of 
the army, the highest positions in the Church, and the chief 
offices of the court and of representation ; the " nobility of 
the robe " held the offices of judicature and the offices of the 
higher administration. There remained for the plebeians 
only industry, commerce, and finance, by means of which, it 
is true, they could buy patents of nobility and become mar- 
quises, but they had to incur the taunts of those who had 
not thus risen to that rank, and the lasting scorn of those 
who had always possessed it. 



512 CONDITION OF FRANCE 

Inequality of Taxation. — The nation paid at that time 
almost 900,000,000 livres.^ The taxes were most unequally 
distributed. The clergy, who, besides the revenues of their 
immense property, received tithes of the productions of the 
land, paid little or nothing, but made "gratuitous donations." 
The nobility and the royal oificers, except in some generali- 
ties, were not subject to the taille, or land tax; they were 
subject to the other direct taxes, ccqntation and the twentieth 
of the income, but a great number found means to gain en- 
tire or partial exemption. The common people, who pos- 
sessed only a small portion of the soil of France, paid the 
whole taille, 91,000,000 ; the tithe, which was in one place 
the fortieth, and in another the fourth part of the gross 
product, and cost the agricultural portion of the inhabitants 
the sum of 133,000,000 ; the seigniorial dues, valued at 
35,000,000 (without making any account of the many vexa- 
tious restrictions to which the peasants were subjected for 
the benefit of their lords), and the corvees, at 20,000,000. 
For the great roads, for example, of which many were con- 
structed under Louis XV., the State undertook only the ex- 
pense of laying them out and of the constructive designs ; 
the materials and the labor were furnished by means of the 
corvee, or enforced services ; so that these works, so profitable 
to the whole country, were executed at the expense and 
amidst the hatred of the people who lived along the route. 

Servitude of Industry and Hindrances to Commerce. — Cor- 
porations, wardenships, and masterships hindered the prog- 
ress of industry by limiting the number of patrons, and by 
allowing only those to work at a trade who had paid for the 
apprenticeship. Not he who desired to do so became a 
master, but he who could buy a mastership at a cost of three, 
four, and sometimes five thousand livres. And after having 
paid all that, he had not yet purchased the right to improve 
upon his industry, for an improvement was an infringement 
upon the rights of the corporation. The manufacturer of 
stuffs could not dye them, the dyer of thread had not the 
right to dye silk or wool, nor the hatter to sell hosiery. 
Bound by minute regulations, the manufacturers were liable 

1 France paid, in 1786, according to M. Bailly, inspector-general of 
finances, for the benefit of the king, 558,172,000 livres ; for the benefit 
of the provinces, 41,448,000 livres ; for the benefit of individuals, corpo- 
rations, and communities, 280,395,000 livres : total, 880,015,000 livres. 



AT THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 513 

to see their products destroyed by tlie police on account of 
an inadvertence or a modification in tlae work whicli would 
cause no injury to the buyer. There was now only one 
coinage, — that of the king; and since 1726 commerce was not 
hindered by changes of specie ; but it was injured by the 
diversity of weights and measures, which differed in each 
city. The India Company had until 1770, by its commer- 
cial privileges, impeded the efforts of private merchants. 
It had just been abolished ; but in domestic trade the mer- 
chant still had to fight against restrictions and injurious 
monopolies. For instance, at Rouen one company was 
appointed to provide the city with grain ; another had the 
privilege of transporting wheat ; a third, that of grinding 
them in the mills : the people were forbidden to supply 
themselves elsewhere. Grain was not even sold from one 
province to another ; so that jobbers could at will create 
famine or plenty at certain places. Added to this, the 
internal custom-houses rendered commercial relations be- 
tween the provinces as difficult as with foreign countries. 
In order to pass down the Sa6ne and the Ehone from Gray 
to Aries, one had to stop and pay thirty times, so that on 
this route trade left in the hands of the toll-gatherers from 
twenty-five to thirty per cent of the value of the products 
transported. Nevertheless, the French colonies were so 
flourishing, and Euro]3ean industry so backward, that in 
spite of all this French commerce was prosperous. 

Decline of Agriculture. — Nearly one-fifth of the land, 
having come permanently into the possession of the clergy, 
produced but little, because it was not subject to the action 
of personal interest ; almost all the rest, cultivated by meta- 
yers, produced but little more. Lands in the possession of 
the peasants themselves were heavily burdened with rents. 
The number of heads of live-stock was small, four times less 
than at the present day ; consequently the lands were 
impoverished for want of sufficient manuring. Few great 
proprietors farmed for themselves. " One could not count," 
said a writer of those times, " three hundred lords living 
upon their own estates." Vauban and Bois-Guilbert com- 
plained of the discredit attached to the position of a farmer. 
This contempt arose from the great poverty in which the 
peasants lived, ruined by taxation, the corvees, the restric- 
tions put upon the trade in grain ; and even more seriously 
by the seigniorial rights of maintaining warrens, dove-cots, 



514 CONDITION OF FRANCE 



an 1 



and of hunting, "which, were so many scourges for the fields 
of the poor. The fine roads constructed by Louis XIV. ran 
only between the great cities. The greater part of the 
present roadways in France do not go back more than eighty 
years, and in many provinces the roads under the royal care 
were impassable for eight months in the year. 

Individual Liberty and Property Ill-Secured. — Lettres de 
cachet placed the one at the disposal of the ministers and 
their friends ; the other was threatened by confiscation, by 
the arbitrary power with which the court was armed for the 
creation of fresh taxation, by a justice which was not always 
impartial, and by those "decrees of suspension" which 
exempted the great from paying their debts. 

Malesherbes, president of the Court of Aids, said to the 
king, in those remonstrances still so celebrated : " So long 
as lettres de cachet are in force, Sire, no citizen can be sure 
that his liberty may not be sacrificed to revenge, for no one 
is great enough to be securely sheltered from the hatred of 
a minister, nor so small as to be beneath the notice of a 
clerk of the farmers-general." 

Liberty of Conscience refused ; Censorship of the Press. — 
The most severe regulations still remained in force against 
dissenters. In 1746 two hundred Protestants were con- 
demned to the galleys or to confinement on account of their 
religious worship, by the Parliament of Grenoble alone ; in 
1762 the Parliament of Toulouse caused a pastor who had 
ministered in Languedoc to be hanged. The same mag- 
istrates broke on the wheel the Protestant Galas, accused 
of having killed his son, who, it was said, had desired to 
become a Catholic, and who in reality had committed suicide. 
Censorship was still in existence. There were in fact several 
censorships, that of the king, that of the Parliament, and 
that of the Sorbonne. The condemned book was sold at a 
higher price, and was circulated none the less ; sometimes 
even under the protection of the ministers themselves. The 
law declared the penalties of branding, the galley, and death, 
against the authors or pedlers of writings hostile to religion 
or the State ; some silly persons allowed themselves to be 
taken up ; more frequently the administration shut its eyes ; 
and this mixture of excessive severity and blind tolerance 
only increased public curiosity. Men took pains to inform 
themselves of the suppressions, in order to know what books 
they ought to read. This age was indeed the period in 



AT THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 515 

which Abb6 Galiani defined eloquence to be "the art of 
saying everything without going to the Bastile." Preret 
was sent there for a dissertation on the Franks ; Lepr^vost 
de Beaumont, secretary of the clergy, remained there twenty- 
one years, until 1789, for having denounced the "famine 
compact " to the Parliament. 

General Misery. — Everything gives evidence of the fright- 
ful misery of the people. The peasants of Normandy lived 
in great part upon oats, and dressed in skins ; in Beauce, the 
granary of Paris, the farmers begged during a part of the 
year ; they were often obliged to make bread of ferns. In a 
large number of the provinces the use of meat was unknown. 
"For three-fourths of the population of France," says a 
writer about 1760, "the consumption of meat does not 
amount to more than a monthly average of a pound per 
head." Vauban estimated that there were in France not 
more than ten thousand families in comfortable circum- 
stances. The amount of articles of food was two or three 
times less then than now. 

" One sees," said La Bruy^re, " certain ferocious animals, 
male and female, scattered over the country, black, livid, 
and burned by the sun, attached to the land which they dig 
and work upon with incomprehensible obstinacy. They 
have an articulate voice, and when they rise on their feet 
they exhibit a human face ; and in fact they are men. At 
night they retire to their dens, where they live upon black 
bread, water, and roots. They spare other men the trouble 
of sowing, cultivating, and gathering articles of food." The 
moralist is here a faithful historian. 

Insufficiency of Schools, Charities, Hospitals, etc. — The 
rich could give their sons an excellent education ; some of 
the children of the lower classes succeeded also, thanks to 
their characters and to circumstances, in being admitted 
among the chosen ones. But the instruction of the poor in 
the small schools was insufficient, and the general ignorance 
was a strong contrast to the refined education of the nobil- 
ity. Hospitals were not lacking; Christian charity had 
multiplied them; but poor-relief was very limited, and 
bands of beggars were constantly seen going through the 
country districts and frightening the people of the towns. 
France had then about eight hundred civil hospitals, whose 
inmates numbered one hundred and ten thousand individuals, 
but the mortality among them was frightful. In the H6tel 



516 CONDITION OF FRANCE 

Dieu of Paris, the richest hospital in France, those sick of 
all kinds of diseases, not excepting contagious ones, were 
placed promiscuonsly in the same rooms, sometimes as 
many as five and six in the same bed. 

Morals. — Never, since the period of the Eoman Empire, 
had morality fallen so low ; and this corruption was general. 
The scandals at the Trianon were repeated at Windsor, at 
Potsdam, and at the palace of the Hermitage. The nobility 
and a portion of the rich middle class rivalled the court. 

To show the entire overthrow of moral ideas a single 
instance will suffice. One of the most estimable men of his 
time, the Marquis of Argenson, was not afraid to write, "mar- 
riage, that monstrous obligation, which will surely go out of 
fashion." He wished that this obligation should become 
" like a lease-contract which could be entered into in Octo- 
ber and given up in January, free unions being much more 
favorable to the race." Marshal Saxe, the Duke of Kiche- 
lieu, a thousand others, indeed every one among the higher 
classes, held the same opinion, or acted upon it. 

Disparity between Ideas and Institutions. — The Middle 
Age, dead in the political world, was still alive in the social 
world. Hence an intense discord between the constituent 
elements of society. The ideas, the general manners of the 
day, were indeed those of the eighteenth century ; but the 
customs and many of the institutions were still those of the 
thirteenth. From the moment Avhen this difference was felt 
a revolution was near at hand, for new ideas necessarily call 
for new institutions. 

Vaiiban, Bois-Guillebert, Fenelon, D' Argenson, Machault, 
Choiseul. — These ruinous abuses, these injurious inequali- 
ties, this great disorder and poverty, provoked criticism. 
Vauban and Bois-Guillebert had demanded reforms from an 
economic point of view ; Fenelon, from a political one. Dur- 
ing the Regency the liberty and even license of the mind 
corresponded to that of morals. A little later a future min- 
ister, the Marquis of Argenson, in his Considerations sur le 
Gouvernement cle la France, written before 1739, demanded 
local decentralization, municipal and cantonal councils, free- 
dom of trade at home and abroad, and the election of the 
royal ofiicers by ballot, and boldly declared that " two things 
were chiefly to be desired for the good of the State ; one, 
that all citizens should be equal, the other that each should 
be the son of his own works." This was one of the articles 



AT THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 617 

of faith of the Eevolution, uttered in advance. Another 
minister, Machault, proposed to replace the taille, which 
was paid by the common peo^Dle alone, by a land tax, to 
which the privileged classes, nobles and priests, should be 
subjected. Choiseul also spoke of reforms ; convents seemed 
to him, as well as to Colbert, too numerous, and he consid- 
ered, as did the States of Pontoise in 1561, that the suppres- 
sion of the immunity from taxes granted to the Church for 
its immense domains would assist in a remarkable degree 
to re-establish the shattered finances of the State. 

Increasing Agitation of Ideas. — The noblest powers of 
the French mind seemed turned towards investigations of 
the public welfare. The caprices of society were no longer 
held up to view in a spirit of ridicule, but for the purpose 
of reforming society itself. Literature became a weapon 
which all, the imprudent as well as the wise, tried to wield, 
and which, striking without intermission, was the cause of 
terrible and irremediable wounds. A strange consequence 
of this was, that those who had most to suffer from this 
invasion of politics by men of letters were those who ap- 
plauded it most. This frivolous, sensual, egoistic society of 
the eighteenth century carried on, even amid its vices, the 
cult of ideas. Never were the salons so animated, courtesy 
so exquisite, conversation so brilliant. Talent there took 
the place of birth, and the nobility chivalrously invited the 
fire of that burning polemic which the sons of the bourgeois 
directed against them. 

Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. — Three men are at 
the head of the movement, — Voltaire, Montesquieu, and 
Eousseau. The first, whose real name was Arouet, was born 
at Paris in 1694, the son of a notary. He saw only the 
unhappy years of the Great King ; and was one of the most 
enthusiastic of those who took part in the reaction against 
the religious habits of the last reign. At the age of twenty- 
one he was sent to the Bastile for a satire upon Louis XIV. 
which he had not written. His tragedy of (Edipe, full of 
threatening verses (1718), and his Henriade, an apology for 
religious toleration (1723), gave him immediate celebrity. 
A Chevalier de Eohan-Chabot revenged himself by the hands 
of his lackeys for some sarcastic words of Voltaire. Voltaire 
demanded reparation. The nobleman, by a second cowardly 
act, obtained from the minister an order to confine in the 
BastUe the impertinent plebeian who dared to call out a 



518 CONDITION OF FRANCE 

great lord. Released soon after, but on condition that he 
should go to some foreign country, Voltaire went to Eng- 
land "to learn to think." He remained there three years, 
and studied Locke, ISTewton, Shakespeare, with an ardent 
devotion to liberty of thought and speech, even more than 
to political liberty. His next writings showed what he had 
brought thence. 

Voltaire attacked the Church with stubborn animosity, 
and his most constant efforts were directed against the spir- 
itual power which hindered thought, much more than against 
the civil power which only hindered action. With a view 
to this war, he made alliance with sovereigns and placed 
himself under their protection. He was in correspondence 
with the great Catherine of Russia ; he sojourned at the 
court of Frederick II. His country seemed to him to be 
wherever he could think freely. He ended by establishing 
himself on the frontier of France, at Ferney, near Geneva. 
Thence were sent abroad, on every wind, light poems, epis- 
tles, tragedies, romances, works of history, science, and 
philosophy, which in a few days were known all over 
Europe. 

In good and in evil, Voltaire represented the society of 
his time. The disorder of morals was to him a matter of 
indifference. But, growing old with the age, he took up 
as it did a more serious method of thought. Social evils 
became his personal enemy, and the love of justice his most 
ardent passion. He aided and defended the victims of 
deplorable judicial errors ; he denounced incessantly the 
numerous defects of legislation, jurisprudence, and public 
administration. He held for fifty years the intellectual 
government of Europe, and he has justly merited the hatred 
of those who believe that the world ought to remain star 
tionary, and the admiration of those who regard society as 
under an obligation to work unceasingly for its moral and 
material amelioration. 

President Montesquieu (1689-1755), a calmer and graver 
spirit, though he wrote the Lettres Persanes, an apparently 
light but really profound and terrible satire (1721), spent 
twenty years in composing a single book, V Esprit des Lois; 
but it was an immortal monument which he reared. Mon- 
tesquieu seeks for and gives the reason for civil and politi- 
cal laws ; he expounds the nature of governments ; and if 
he does not condemn any of them, if changes of them dis- 



AT THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 519 

turb him but little, on the whole it is English liberty which 
he upholds for the admiration of France. 

Rousseau, the son of a clockmaker of Geneva (1712-1778), 
when well advanced in a life full of faults, miseries, and 
inconsistencies, composed his first Discours contre les sciences 
et les arts. It was a declaration of war against civilization; 
his second book on L'Origine de I'inegalite parmi les hommes, 
was another against the entire social order. In Emile, he 
laid out a chimerical plan of education ; in the Contrat /Social, 
he asserted the principle of national sovereignty and uni- 
versal suffrage, proclaiming great truths and great errors 
with singular eloquence. Rousseau gave the frivolous society 
of his age a vigorous shock which brought it back to natural 
feeling ; in his Nouvelle Heloise he opened its eyes to real 
nature and true passion ; he created the poetry upon which 
the nineteenth century has subsisted. 

The political influence of these three men can be traced 
in the three great epochs of the Revolution; that of Vol- 
taire in the universal enthusiasm of 1789, that of Montes- 
quieu in the efforts of the constitutionalists of the National 
Assembly, that of Rousseau in the thought, if not in the 
acts, of the savage dreamers of the Convention. 

Near to these great writers stood Buffon, the great natur- 
alist ; and Diderot and D'Alembert, who founded the Ency- 
clopedie, that immense survey of human attainments, set 
forth in a manner often threatening to social order, always 
hostile to religion. Helv^tius, Baron Holbach, Lamettrie, 
and the abb6 Raynal went still further. 

But a separate place is needed for the Chancellor D'Agues- 
seau, for the moralist Vauvenargues, for the abb6 de Con- 
dillac, the powerful analyst ; for his brother, the abb6 
Mably, the bold publicist ; and for the Marquis of Condor- 
cet, who, afterwards condemned with the Girondists, com- 
posed, while awaiting death, his Esquisse des progr^s de 
Vesprit humain. 

The Economists. — In the seventeenth century a nation 
was considered the richer the less she bought and the more 
she sold. Quesnay showed that the precious metals are 
the sign of wealth, not wealth itself, which he considered 
originated in agriculture. Gournay claimed industry as its 
source ; Adam Smith, who lived a long time in France, labor. 

Thus the mind of man attempted to solve the most diffi- 
cult problems which relate to human society. And all of 



520 CONDITION OF FRANCE 

them, philosopliers as well as economists, souglit for the 
solution on the side of liberty. From the school of Quesnay 
emanated the celebrated axiom, "Laissez f aire, laissez pas- 
ser," or, as D'Argenson put it, " Don't govern too much." 

Arts. — Art had degenerated into prettiness. Charming 
works were produced ; the h6tels of the rich were decorated 
with spirit and coquettish elegance; but neither a great 
statue nor a great picture was produced. And as Versailles 
was deserted for boudoirs, the architects reduced their plans 
to the modest proportions of a society which no longer 
assumed the grand air of the preceding age. 

Nevertheless, Ange Gabriel reared the two charming col- 
onnades of the Place de la Concorde, the Ecole Militaire, 
the opera-hall of Vereailles, and the chateau of Compi^gne ; 
Soufflot erected the Pantheon. The sculptors left few 
works. The painters have greater reputation, particularly 
Watteau (1721), although he represented only a conven- 
tional art, with his shepherdesses of the opera ; Carle Van- 
loo, whose "^neas carrying Anchises" is much praised; 
J. Vernet, celebrated for his marine paintings ; Boucher, 
whom his contemporaries dared to call the French Raphael. 

Sciences. — The more austere sciences were paving the 
way for their accession and empire by commencing the 
great works of investigation. But great discoveries and 
great men, with the exception of Buffon, do not belong to 
the reign of Louis XV. There were Reaumur, who con- 
structed the thermometer called by his name ; Clairaut and 
D'Alembert, who developed mathematical analysis ; the bot- 
anists Adanson and Bernard de Jussieu; the astronomer 
Lacaille ; the geometers Bouguer, La Condamine, and Mau- 
pertuis. 

Increasing Power of Public Opinion. — All this mental 
work had succeeded in creating in France a new power, — 
public opinion, to whose influence the government began to 
be subjected. It was desired that the administration should 
no longer be a frightful labyrinth in which the wisest were 
bewildered; that the public finances should cease to be 
given over to plunder ; that each person should have some 
security for his personal liberty and fortune ; that the 
criminal code should be less bloody and the civil code more 
equitable. Religious toleration was demanded; and law 
founded on principles of natural and rational right; and 
the unity of weights and measures ; and taxation payable 



AT THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 521 

by all ; and emancipation from labor and free admissibility 
to public offices ; the most active solicitude for all popular 
interests ; in a word, equality in tlie presence of the law, 
and liberty regulated by right. 

These demands were so earnest, so general, that the 
necessity of acceding to them was plain to all intelligent 
minds. Never did a terrible movement have more prophets 
to sound the alarm. At home and abroad the same opinion 
was expressed ; by Lord Chesterfield on the one hand, and 
by Kant on the other. " All the signs I have ever encoun- 
tered in history as forerunners of great revolutions," said 
the former, " at present exist in France, and are every day 
increasing." As the century advanced and the shame of 
the government increased, as after Eossbach came the 
Parc-aux-Cerfs and the "famine compact," the voice of 
protest, at first merely satirical, became stern and formida- 
ble. The reign which had begun with the Lettres Persanes, 
ended with the Contrat Social. 

In the second half of the eighteenth century all the 
governments of Europe, aroused and excited by French 
ideas, recognized the necessity of making many reforms. 
Kings and ministers set to work, — Pombal in Portugal; 
Ferdinand VI., Charles III., and Aranda in Spain ; Tanucci 
at Naples ; the grand duke Leopold in Tuscany ; Joseph 
II. in Austria; Frederick II. in Prussia: they reformed 
the laws, destroyed privileges and abuses, and exacted im- 
portant sacrifices from the nobility and clergy, while at the 
same time increasing their own power. They dug canals, 
multiplied highways, encouraged industry, commerce, and 
agriculture ; they tried to increase the national wealth and 
the prosperity of the people, and some of them succeeded 
in doing so, though it was for the purpose of increasing 
their own revenues. Everywhere justice and toleration 
were talked of, and philanthropy became a fashion ; but all 
this did not hinder diplomacy from recurring at need to 
the most Machiavellic proceedings. The governments, 
indeed, made reforms, but never thought of reforming 
themselves. In France, also, during the first part of the 
reign of Louis XVI., reforms were attempted, and it was 
only after they had proved abortive that the Eevolution 
broke out. 



522 REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 



CHAPTER LVIII. 

REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. TO THE REVOLUTION. 
(1774-1789 A.D.) 

Louis XVI. — The new king, the grandson of Louis XV., 
was only twenty years old. He was a prince of pure morals, 
a somewhat narrow mind, and extreme timidity of charac- 
ter and speech ; loving the right, and desiring it, but unfor- 
tunately too weak to be able to force those about him to 
carry out his wishes. The first thing he did was to remit 
succession dues ; he reformed the law which rendered the 
taiUaUes conjointly responsible for the payment of the 
taxes, and recalled the Parliament. If he manifested his 
weakness by reappointing to the ministry the old and use- 
less Maurepas, he showed his love of right by removing 
from it Maupeou and Terray, whom he replaced by Males- 
herbes and Turgot. Later, he gave the ministry of war to 
another honest man, the Count of St. Germain, who desired 
to reorganize the finances and the administration, but exe- 
cuted his reforms ill. The Count of Vergennes, who was 
given the portfolio of foreign affairs, had filled several 
embassies with distinction. He was ' a laborious man, and 
very conversant with the affairs of his department, but 
lacked firmness of character. 

Malesherbes and Turgot (1774-1776) . — Lamoignon de 
Malesherbes, one of the most admirable men of the eigh- 
teenth century, had long been president of the Court of Aids 
and supervisor of publications. He had always urgently 
advocated economical administration and favored the spirit 
of reform. This line of conduct had gained him great pop- 
ularity among men of letters, when the king appointed him 
to the position of minister of his household. 

Turgot, a man of the greatest talent, was possessed of as 
much virtue as learning. As intendant of Limoges since 
1761 he had suppressed the corvees, opened roads, and made 
popular the use of potatoes ; and by wise and generous 
measures he had saved this poor province from actual 



REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 523 

famine. From the moment of Ms entrance upon his minis- 
try (1774) he urged upon the king, "No bankruptcy, no 
increase of taxation, no borrowing." Witliout recurring to 
these now familiar expedients, he found means within 
twenty months to pay off more than 100,000,000 of debts. 
He proxDOsed great reforms : the gradual introduction of a 
complete system of local self-government, the abolition of 
the corvee, the imposition of a land tax upon the nobility 
and clergy ; the amelioration of the condition of cures and 
vicars, and the suppression of the greater part of the monas- 
teries ; the equalization of the tax by means of a land survey, 
liberty of conscience, and the recall of the Protestants ; re- 
demption of feudal revenues ; a single code ; a uniform 
system of weights and measures for the whole kingdom ; the 
suppression of wardenships and masterships, which impeded 
indiTstry ; freedom of thought as well as of commerce and 
industry ; finally, he interested himself in moral as well as 
in material needs, forming a vast plan of public instruction 
which should shed light in every direction. 

Reforms of Turcot ; Opposition of the Privileged Classes. 
— These reforms would have been neither more nor less 
than a revolution ; the threatened interests made a sort of 
war upon the minister ; he could only proceed slowly and 
partially. He made a beginning by authorizing the free 
circulation of grain and flour throughout the kingdom. 
His enemies hastened to say that exportation would soon 
be allowed ; that it was already, in fact. The people were 
excited: they were made to fear a famine. Insurrections 
broke out in the country districts. It became necessary to 
use force (1775). 

There was a more violent outburst against Turgot when 
he induced the king to adox^t the idea of replacing the 
corvee by a tax which should be x^aid by the landowners. 
Even the Parliament, its interests being affected, entered 
into the struggle, for the defence of an obnoxious abuse, 
against the reforming minister. It registered the edict 
only under comxDulsion (1776). The abolition of warden- 
shix3S aad mastershix^s, that is to say, such freeing of indus- 
try as he had desired to effect in the case of commerce, 
increased the number of his enemies. 

Weakness of the King. — The principal minister, Man re- 
pas, secretly undermined Turgot's influence with the king ; 
the queen attacked a comptroller-general who talked con- 



524 REIGN OF LOUIS XVL 

stantly of economy : Louis XVI., in spite of his good inten- 
tions, began to be weary of the mental strain which Turgot 
caused him by holding up to his view vast designs which 
were beyond his capacity. The king worked at the lock- 
smith's trade, designed maps, or passed whole days in hunt- 
ing. When the Emperor Joseph II. came to France in 
1777, he learned with astonishment that his brother-in-law, 
far from having visited his cities and provinces, had not 
even seen the Invalides or the Ecole Militaire. Royalty 
had little by little retired from the centre of national life, 
and become isolated in the solemn idleness of Versailles. 

Discharge of Turgot (1776) ; Suppression of his Reforms. 
— Malesherbes was the first to give way; he sent in his 
resignation. Turgot, a stronger character, awaited his dis- 
missal ; he would not abandon a position in which he could 
do good, until he was driven from it. In May, 1776, he re- 
ceived orders to resign the ministry, and wrote to the king, 
" My only desire is that you shall always be able to believe 
that I have been mistaken, and that I have warned you of 
fancied dangers. I hope that time will not justify my fears, 
and that your reign may be as happy and as peaceful as 
your people have expected from your principles of justice 
and benevolence." 

Four months had scarcely passed before the king had 
yielded to the privileged classes the re-establishment of 
the corvee and of mastership in trades. Turgot and Males- 
herbes were succeeded by incompetent men. Maurepas, a 
silly old man, feared the men who troubled his peace of 
mind by showing him the danger and by trying to over- 
come it. 

Necker (1776-1781) , — Meantime the American war was 
about to begin. In order to face the additional expenses, 
with a budget in arrears, there was need of a capable man. 
In this emergency a Genevese banker named Necker, who 
had a great reputation as a fuiancier, was called upon. As 
he was a Protestant and a foreigner, he received only the 
title of director of the finances (October, 1776). His mind 
had not the breadth and force of Turgot's ; he believed that 
the disease of which France was dying could be cured by 
partial expedients and reforms. Still, he was influenced by 
the most generous feelings : he earnestly desired the public 
good. For five years he acquitted himself with honor in 
a position which was rendered difficult by the petty and 



BEIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 525 

jealous character of Maurepas, the indolence of the king, 
and the greed of the courtiers. He was obliged to dimin- 
ish the deficit, and to provide for the costs of the Ameri- 
can war and the enormous expenses of an over-numerous 
court. He succeeded in this without increasing taxation, 
without greatly economizing in the court expenses, but by 
a reduction in the costs of collection, by a thousand little use- 
ful reforms, and by borrowing 490,000,000. This was defer- 
ring the difficulty, not solving it, and the chasm continued 
to widen. He relied upon peace, upon the future, to fill it. 

Necker fell two years before the conclusion of the peace. 
The occasion of his fall was his famous Compte rendu, or 
report on the state of the finances, published in 1781, which 
made so great a noise, and yet was very far from complete. 
There was no mention made in it of the loans, nor of the 
expenses of the war. In it the receipts appeared to be 
10,000,000 more than the expenditures. The public received 
this publication with immense applause. The caxDitalists 
lent the minister 236,000,000 livres. But the court was 
vexed at this appeal to public opinion. If daylight was let 
in upon the financial administration, what would become of 
the pensions and the customary robbery ? Maurepas gave 
the signal for the attack, and the war which had been so 
successful against Turgot recommenced against his suc- 
cessor. Parliament rose against the edict for the re-estab- 
lishment of the provincial assemblies ; the courtiers with 
one voice decried the minister, who was ruining them by 
introducing order into the finances. Louis XVI. again 
yielded to this clamor o'f the court ; and when ISTecker, his 
patience exhausted, tendered him his resignation, he ac- 
cepted it (May, 1781). For the real public this was a 
calamity, and was so regarded. Besides his financial re- 
forms, some honorable acts had marked his administration ; 
he had caused the serfs of the royal domain to be set free ; 
destroyed the right of pursuit, which gave the lord all the 
property acquired in a foreign country by his fugitive serf ; 
and abolished the " preliminary qiiestion " by torture. 

The American War (1778-1783) ; La Fayette.— The Seven 
Years' War, so favorable politically to England, had raised her 
debt to £133,000,000, which demanded an annual interest of 
£5,000,000. The mother country thought of unloading upon 
her colonies a portion of this heavy burden. But the colon- 
ists, invoking the great principle of the English constitution 



526 REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 

that no one is bound to submit to taxes which have not been 
voted by his representatives, offered armed resistance, and 
war broke out (1775). The insurrection extended to all the 
provinces ; the following year their deputies, assembled in 
general congress at Philadelphia, published their Declaration 
of Independence. 

France hailed with enthusiasm a revolution in which she 
recognized the principles of French philosophy. The three 
American envoys to Paris, Arthur Lee, Silas Deane, and 
particularly the aged Franklin, were the objects of a per- 
petual ovation. The young nobility, carried away by the 
philosophical ideas of the time, and filled with a desire to 
wipe out the disgrace of the Seven Years' War, asked per- 
mission, in great numbers, to set out for America. The 
Marquis de la Fayette, scarcely twenty years old, himself 
fitted out a vessel which he loaded with arms. The govern- 
ment, however, feared a rupture with England. Vergennes 
contented himself at first with sending indirect assistance 
in the shape of arms, money, and ammunition, which Beau- 
marchais undertook to deliver. Louis XVI. did not like 
war, above all he did not wish to seem to be the aggressor, 
and perhaps feared the consequences of embarking France 
in a contest of liberty against monarchy. Yet he allowed 
himself to be led on, and in February, 1778, he signed a 
commercial treaty with the United States, to which was to 
be added an alliance offensive and defensive if England 
should declare war against France. The English ambassa- 
dor was immediately recalled. 

D'Orvilliers, D'Estaing, and De Guichen. — Happily France 
had passed through the hands of Choiseul, who had restored 
her navy. A fleet set sail for America (1778), under Count 
d'Estaing; another was formed at Brest, to fight in the 
European seas ; and an army was prepared to make a de- 
scent upon England. Count d'Orvilliers left Brest with 
thirty-two ships, and fought an indecisive battle off Ouessant 
against Admiral Keppel (July). Count d'Estaing would 
have gained a brilliant victory over Admiral Howe, but 
his fleet was scattered by a storm. Bouill^, however, took 
Dominica. 

The policy of Choiseul, who had renewed the alliance 
of France with Spain, now bore fruit. She declared war 
against England, and united her navy to that of France 
(1779). Count d'Orvilliers, with sixty-six ships of the line, 



REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 527 

sailed for Plymouth ; but a storm scattered his fleet. D'Es- 
taing captured Grenada. The English admiral Rodney, on 
the other hand, defeated a Spanish fleet, reprovisioned Gi- 
braltar, which had been besieged by a French and Spanish 
army, and fought in the Antilles three indecisive battles 
with Count de Guichen. Guichen, in his turn, in Europe, 
carried off an English convoy of sixty ships, with booty 
amoimting to 50,000,000 francs. 

The Armed Neutrality. — A repulse of Count d'Estaing 
before Savannah compromised for a moment the American 
cause. But a vast coalition was forming against the mari- 
time despotism of England. In order to prevent Spain 
from receiving naval supplies from the northern countries, 
the English stopped and examined neutral vessels. After 
much damage to neutral commerce, Catharine II. proclaimed 
(1780) the freedom of vessels sailing under neutral flags, 
provided articles contraband of war were not protected by 
them; to sustain this principle, she proposed a plan of 
armed neutrality which was successively adopted by Sweden 
and Denmark, Prussia and Austria, Portugal, the Two Sic- 
ilies, and Holland. England, greatly irritated, immediately 
declared war against Holland, the weakest and most vulner- 
able of the neutral powers ; and Rodney attacked St. Eus- 
tatius, one of its colonies. 

Naval Achievements. — The year 1781 was, for France, 
the most successful year of the war. Count de Grasse won 
a series of brilliant victories. In October, 1781, Washing- 
ton and Rochambeau forced General Cornwallis to surrender 
at Yorktown, with seven thousand men, six ships of war, 
and fifty merchant vessels. This victory decided American 
independence. At the same time the Marquis de Bouille 
took St. Eustatius from the English; the Duke of Crillon 
took Minorca, and Suffren, one of the greatest of French 
seamen, sent to the East Indies to save the Dutch colonies, 
won in those regions four naval victories (1782). He 
was already concerting with Hyder-Ali, sultan of Mysore, 
great plans for the destruction of the English rule in the 
Eastern Continent, when the conclusion of peace interrupted 
him. 

In the Antilles the English retained but one island of 
any importance, that of Jamaica ; De Grasse tried to take 
it from them in 1782, but, attacked by superior forces under 
the command of Rodney, he was defeated and captured: 



528 REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 

there were only three men on board his ship who were not 
wounded. 

Siege of Gibraltar. — The skilful defence of Gibraltar by- 
Sir G. Elliot against the combined forces of France and 
Spain was another check. Twenty thousand men and forty 
ships blockaded the place, two hundred cannons on the land 
side and ten floating batteries kept up an incessant fire 
upon it. The place, attacked as no other had ever been 
before, was soon reduced to extremity. In vain it had 
thrown six hundred red-hot balls at the floating batteries ; 
when at last one of them succeeded, and started a confla- 
gration which resulted in the dispersion of the batteries. 
Twelve thousand men perished in this siege, and Gibraltar 
remained an English possession. 

Treaty of Versailles (1783). — Meanwhile England had 
lost her reputation for being invincible upon the seas, suf- 
fered prodigiously in her commerce, and added 2,500,000,000 
francs (£116,000,000) to her debt. The Whigs, coming into 
ofiice, caused proposals of peace to be conveyed to the 
cabinet of Versailles. France had spent 1,400,000,000 ; but 
she had at least obtained a great and noble result, — the 
independence of the United States. The peace, signed in 
September, 1783, was honorable to France, which caused 
Minorca to be restored to Spain, and obtained for itself 
the restitution of Chandernagore, Pondicherry, etc., in the 
Indies, Tobago and St. Lucia in the Antilles ; the islands 
of St. Pierre and Miquelon, with the right of fishing on 
ISTewfoundland ; and Goree and Senegal in Africa. 

A treaty of commerce between France and England was 
signed in 1786 which substituted, in place of the existing 
prohibitions, an ad valorem duty upon merchandise common 
to the two countries. This treaty was the first step taken 
by England towards free trade. A treaty of commerce with 
Eussia in 1787 opened that country to France. France also 
supported Sweden and Bavaria against the ambition of the 
great powers. Her diplomacy was as successful as her 
arms. 

Progress of the Sciences. — Meantime the movement which 
ruled the age continued its course, and influenced even the 
arts. Remarkable public works were begun. ITew sciences 
were established; all sciences were striving for develop- 
ment and being popularized. Lavoisier decomposed water, 
thus transforming chemistry (1775) . The abb6 de L'Ep6e 



REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 529 

founded his institution for deaf-mutes (1778) ; Valentin 
Haiiy, tlie institution for the blind (1784) ; while Pinel 
showed that the insane were not dangerous creatures whom 
it was necessary to chain, but patients who could be cured. 
Turgot established a chair of hydrodynamics. In 1778 a 
chair of mineralogy was established, and the Eoyal Society 
of Medicine was founded ; in 1780 the veterinary school at- 
Alfort was established; in 1788 the School of Mines; in 
1787, in the Academy of Sciences, sections of natural his- 
tory, agriculture, mineralogy, and physics were instituted. 
Parmentier increased the alimentary resources of the people 
by popularizing the use of potatoes (1779), and Daubenton 
introduced into France the Spanish breed of merino sheep. 
It was in these years that Galvani of Bologna exhibited 
(1791) the singular phenomena of electricity to which his 
name has been given, and Volta of Como invented (1794) 
the pile, which has opened a new career to chemistry. 
Finally, in 1789, Laurent de Jussieu proclaimed, for botani- 
cal classification, the principle of the subordination of char- 
acters, which, generalized by Cuvier, gave a new life to 
natural sciences. At the same time, bold and scientific 
navigators, the Englishmen Wallis and Cook, the French- 
men Bougainville and La Perouse, finishing the work of 
Columbus and Vasco da Gama, completed the exploration 
of the globe, and at the price of a thousand dangers opened 
safe routes to commerce. Thus the sciences, properly 
speaking, were tending to use and practice, while the moral 
sciences were tending to reforms. This involuntary agree- 
ment announced the approach of a new era. 

Death of Voltaire and Rousseau (1778). — The press be- 
came more active and more audacious. Voltaire, then 
eighty-four years old, returned to Paris and stopped at the 
h6tel of the Marquis de Villette, at the corner of the quay 
which ever since has been known as the Quai Voltaire. An 
immense crowd gathered under the windows and in the halls. 
He went to the French Academy, which came forward to 
meet him, a thing it never did even for sovereigns. Then 
he went to the Comedie-Frangaise, where, at the first repre- 
sentation of his Irhie, he received the most enthusiastic 
homage. He survived this triumph only two months ; and 
died in May, 1778 : his body was transferred to the Pan- 
theon in 1791. 

Rousseau, his rival in glory and influence, soon followed 



530 REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 

him (July), and died, as lie had lived, alone, in the retreat 
provided for him at Ermenonville by the Marquis of Girar- 
din. Montesquieu had died in 1755. Of the four great 
writers of the century, Buffon alone survived; he did not 
pass away until 1788, at the age of eighty-one. ^He had just 
written (1778) another magnificent work, his Epoques de la 
.Nature, one of the books which took strongest hold upon 
the imagination of the men of that time. Very far from 
Voltaire and Rousseau, yet inheriting the spirit of both, 
Beaumarchais, the author of the Mariage de Figaro (1784), 
continued the war against the prejudices of birth, and Ber- 
nardin de Saint-Pierre, in his Etudes (1784), but especially 
his Paul and Virginia, tried to revive the taste for nature, 
simple manners, and true sentiment. 

Invention of the Air-Balloon (1784). — The desire to be- 
come acquainted with and cut new paths was so great that it 
seemed as though the horizon of human knowledge had no 
longer any limits. Franklin had just " brought down the 
thunder from the clouds," and Giroud de Villette, Pildtre de 
Eozier, and D'Arlande made (1783) the first ascension in 
a fire-balloon, while two years after, Blanchard passed, in a 
balloon, from Dover to Calais. 

Animal Magnetism ; Illuminism ; Freemasonry. — Side by 
side with the aerostats, the mysteries and the falsehoods of 
magnetism : Cagliostro and Mesmer ; the one, an Italian 
adventurer, claimed to possess the true secrets of chemis- 
try, as discovered by the priests of Egypt and India ; the 
other, a German adventurer, came to Paris to give his 
famous stances (1779). In a rich apartment, dimly lighted, 
and so furnished as to act upon the imagination and the 
senses, the sick or the curious assembled around the mag- 
netic trough : some soon fell into convulsions ; the con- 
tagion seized the rest. It was vaunted as a remedy for 
everything. 

Certain minds became in a measure unbalanced. St. Mar- 
tin published the incomprehensible reveries of the Philosophe 
inconnu ; the extraordinary book of Swedenborg was intro- 
duced and eagerly devoured. Beneath politics and science, 
in shade and in silence, the freemasons worked ; a vast and 
ancient society of men of all ranks and all countries, which 
counted princes among its initiated, and, under its strange 
and somewhat childish rites, concealed and propagated lib- 
eral ideas. 



REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 531 

ftueen Marie Antoinette. — Amid the ferment of thought 
public opinion gained in power. The court no longer gave 
the tone and direction to French society. Louis XVI. could 
not keep up the tradition of Louis XIV., and the beautiful 
and gracious Marie Antoinette had made many enemies at 
court by her too exclusive friendships, and among the pub- 
lic by too great a disregard of rules of etiquette and royal 
conventionalities. She neglected Versailles for Trianon, 
and thought that a queen of France could then live to please 
herself. Such were the habits of the house of Austria, but 
it had not been so with the house of Bourbon. Consequently 
those scandals began which later turned to hatred, and 
finally burst out in such a terrible manner against her. 

An unfortunate event, as early as the year 1784, showed 
the feeling of the public in regard to her. The cardinal of 
Eohan was then the scandal of the Church. When ambas- 
sador at Vienna he had compromised his character of 
priest and representative of France by frivolous conduct 
and frightful expenditures. Scorned by the king, and par- 
ticularly by the queen, he was in complete disgrace. An 
intriguing woman, the Countess of Lamotte, made him be- 
lieve that she was the confidante of Marie Antoinette, and 
that that princess was disposed to be favorable to him. By 
means of forged letters and a pretended secret interview 
she completely duped the cardinal. Then she persuaded 
him that the queen charged him to purchase secretly for 
her a certain necklace of great price. He went to see the 
merchants, showed them the letters, and obtained possession 
of the jewel, from which the countess at once realized the 
desired profit. Some time after, the jewellers, uneasy at not 
being paid, wrote to the queen. Everything was at once 
disclosed. The cardinal was sent to the Bastile. Parlia- 
ment set him at liberty, regarding him as only a dupe, and 
condemned the countess. The affair made the greatest 
commotion, and though the queen had had nothing to do 
with it, her reputation suffered greatly from having her 
name connected with such a scandal. After the retirement 
of Necker, Marie Antoinette began to take an active interest 
in the affairs of the government, and acquired a great ascen- 
dancy over the king. But not having the administrative 
genius of her mother, Maria Theresa, though she desired 
influence, she did not wish for the cares of business ; and 
as she gave the latter only a partial attention, she could not 



532 REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 

give lier influence an enlightened direction. It was she 
who caused Calonne to be appointed comptroller-general in 
1783. 

Calonne (1783-1787). — Calonne had some administrative 
ability and despatched business with great ease ; but he was 
a spendthrift. His financial principles were thus stated by 
himself : " A man who wishes to borrow must appear to be 
rich, and in order to appear rich it is necessary to make a 
display by expenditure. Economy is doubly fatal : it warns 
the capitalists not to lend to a treasury involved in debt ; 
it causes the arts to languish, while prodigality invigorates 
them." The courtiers and the women were delighted with 
this amiable minister. The king, in his indolence, found 
comfort in a minister whom nothing embarrassed. This 
pleasant exterior covered 500,000,000 fr. borrowed in three 
years, and that in time of peace. The time came, however, 
to disclose everything to the king. Then the spendthrift 
became a reformer. Calonne conceived a plan in which all 
the ideas of all his predecessors were combined : he proposed 
to subject the privileged classes to a tax and the payment 
of a subsidy based on land, to diminish the taille; to decree 
the freedom of the grain trade, etc. 

The Notables (1787). — Thus the fatal words, pn'mZe^/es, 
abuses, were continually repeated. The government, in 
order to effect these reforms, would need to have recourse 
to the nation. But the name of the States-General excited 
alarm ; the court did not venture to do more than call an 
assembly of the Notables. The Notables assembled on Feb- 
ruary 12, 1787. They numbered one hundred and forty- 
four members, of whom twenty-seven were regarded as 
representatives of the Third Estate ; in reality there were 
only six or seven plebeians. Calonne set before them his 
plans, which were received with general approbation. But 
the Notables were less interested in looking into the finances 
than in avoiding the land-tax. The discussion became very 
earnest. Calonne grew angry ; the king also ; the Notables 
were ordered to deliberate upon the form and not the prin- 
ciple of the tax. But the enemies of Calonne finally carried 
the day, and Louis exiled him to Lorraine. 

Ministry of Brienne (1787-1788). —One of those most 
active against Calonne had been Brienne, archbishop of Tou- 
louse ; brilliant, ambitious, but a prelate without morality 
and perhaps without faith, whom the pious Louis XVI. had 



REIGN OF LOUIS XVI . 533 

long kept out of the ministry. He finally appointed him 
prime minister; Brienne*gained credit among the Notables 
by his plans of economy. This assembly, however, ad- 
journed in a very short time (May 25). The Notables had 
accomplished nothing; but in their midst the words " States- 
General," and even " National Assembly," had been uttered. 

Brienne, having got rid of the Notables, now found himself 
face to face with the Parliament. The edict with regard to 
the provincial assemblies was registered without difficulty ; 
but an animated discussion arose on the subjects of the 
stamp-tax and the land-tax. The king held a lit de justice 
(i.e., appeared in the Parliament), and had the last two edicts 
registered. The Parliament protested. The king banished 
it to Troyes. Few men were now more unpopular than Bri- 
enne ; in the first place he was known to be on good terms 
with the queen, who was already boldly attacked by pam- 
phlets. Brienne was not even supported by his order. The 
assembly of the clergy refused him a miserable subsidy of 
1,800,000 livres. Abroad, the ministry was not more fortu- 
nate. It left the intrigues of England and the arms of the 
king of Prussia to overturn the republican government of 
the Netherlands. 

But now a reconciliation was accomplished between the 
government and Parliament. Brienne had won over a ma- 
jority of the members of Parliament. He brought in an 
edict for a loan of 420,000,000, to be realized in five years. 
In exchange, he promised the convocation of the States- 
General before the end of that period, having resolved in 
advance not to keep his promise. There were violent pro- 
tests, but Louis XVI. ordered the edict registered. Two 
members who opposed were arrested. The Parliament was 
thrown into commotion by this attack upon individual lib- 
erty in the person of two of its members. D'Espr^menil 
drew up, in the name of the Parliament, an act in which was 
summed up what were called the fundamental laws of the 
monarchy ; another councillor proposed still further protest. 
By the king's order, the two were arrested in full session of 
Parliament, and sent to prison. 

The government profited by this stroke ; the Parliament, 
summoned to Versailles, was obliged to verify several edicts 
which deprived it of the power of registration, and trans- 
ferred the same to a plenary court, which was a sort of coun- 
cil of State composed of those who were devoted to the king, 



534 REIGN OF LOUIS XVL 

and -which, abridged the jurisdiction of the Parliament. Ee- 
sistance was everywhere organized, and disturbances took 
place in Brittany, in B6arn, and in ten other provinces, and 
an insurrection in Grenoble. To raise money, Brienne seized 
the invalid pension fund and the proceeds of several benev- 
olent lotteries ; but in August, 1788, he was obliged to de- 
clare that the payments of the State should be made partly 
in specie, partly in treasury notes. This was a fatal blow 
to Brienne. He was obliged to give up his place to Necker 
(August 23). 

Second Ministry of Necker (1788-1789) . — The return of 
Necker called forth acclamations of joy ; the departure of 
Brienne caused scenes of disorder and unhappily of blood- 
shed. This first bloodshed in Paris made a deep impres- 
sion. However, confidence revived, thanks to Necker. In 
one day the public securities rose thirty per cent. But 
there were in the treasury only five hundred thousand 
livres, while the needs of the State were urgent and consid- 
erable. It was too late to save the country by minor expe- 
dients. An appeal to the nation became indispensable. 
Brienne had promised to convoke the States-General in 
1789 ; ISTecker confirmed the engagement. 

Convocation of the States-General. — The meeting of the 
States became the one thought of Prance. Under what form 
should they assemble ? The Third Estate had become a con- 
siderable order, on account of its wealth, its intelligence, its 
activity, and the conspicuous positions held by its chief men 
in the government and in the administration of the country. 
Respect for the nobility was greatly diminished. Now in 
order that the Third Estate should occupy the position it 
deserved, it was necessary at least to double the number of 
its members, and establish individual vote, in place of vote 
by orders. This view was sustained by Necker and by all 
liberal men. But the nobility resisted. Necker wished to 
decide the question in an assembly of Notables, but they re- 
fused to make any change in the ancient form. Then he 
resolved to settle one part of the difficulty himself. A de- 
cree of the council, establishing double representation, with- 
out .deciding anything as to individual vote, convoked the 
States at Versailles for the first of May, 1789. 



FIFTEENTH PERIOD. 



Constitutional Feance, since 1789. 



CHAPTER LIX. 

THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 
(1789-1791 A.D.) 

Necessity of a Constitution. — It had been long said that 
the Third Estate j)aid in money, the nobility in blood, and 
the clergy in prayers. Now, the clergy of the court and the 
salon prayed but little, and the nobility no longer composed 
the entire army ; but the Third Estate had remained faithful 
to its functions in the State : it was always paying, and more 
each year. It was inevitable that the day should come when, 
weary of paying, it would demand a reckoning. That day 
is called the Eevolution of 1789. 

The abbe Siey6s, in a celebrated pamphlet, discussing 
questions which every one was then asking, said, " What 
is the Third Estate? The nation. What is it now ? JSTothing. 
What ought it to be ? Everything." He estimated the num- 
ber of the nobility of all ages and both sexes to be less than 
one hundred and ten thousand, and the clergy was not more 
numerous. 

The coiirt, especially the queen, the Count of Artois, the 
princes of Conde and Conti, were desirous that the States- 
General should have charge of financial matters only, and 
that when the deficit was made up and the debts paid, 
the deputies should be sent home. But political reforms 
were the best precaution to be taken against the recurrence 
of the deficit. 

France suffered, in fact, from two evils, of which one was 
the result of the other, — a bad financial system and a bad 



536 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 

political system, the deficit and the governmental abuses. 
In order to remedy the first, three things were necessary, — 
economy, a less expensive system of collection, a more equi- 
table distribution of taxation ; to remedy the second, a reor- 
ganization of the government was needed. Royalty, which 
had already been transformed so many times, must submit 
to another change ; for, under its latest form, that of abso- 
lute royalty by divine right, it had produced all that the 
country could expect from it, unity of territory and govern- 
mental unity. With the immense development of industry, 
commerce, science, public spirit, and personal wealth, France 
now had interests too complex, needs too numerous, to be 
, able to place the control of them all in the hands of a single 
man. The nation waj sufficiently mature to take charge of 
its own affairs. Unfortunately a people separates itself 
from its past only at the cost of cruel lacerations. 

The Elections ; Mirabeau. — The excitement increased. 
Clubs were organized everywhere ; among them the Breton 
Club, out of which was to grow the sinister society of the 
Jacobins. Divisions existed in the very midst of the privi- 
leged orders. The clergy had its democracy, the country 
curates ; a portion of the great lords, La Fayette, La Eoche- 
foucauld-Liancourt, the counts of Montmorency and Lally- 
Tollendal, the Viscount de Noailles, etc., were favorable to 
reforms. 

In Provence the nobles protested against the decision of 
the king's council. • An illustrious deserter of their cause, 
the Count of Mirabeau, made a violent attack upon this 
protest. Repelled by the nobles, who would not allow him 
to take his seat among them, he went through the province, 
among the populace, who were dazzled by the first brilliancy 
of his eloquence, and calmed by his influence the distur- 
bances which had burst out at Aix and Marseilles. His 
youth had been passed in dissipation ; but he had suffered 
much from the harsh injustice of his father and also of 
the government, which had issued against him seventeen 
lettres de cachet. He had been imprisoned and condemned to 
death. His was a stained name, but he possessed a supe- 
rior mind. His voice was to become the voice of the Revo- 
lution itself. 

Demands of the Cahiers. — The following are the demands 
which, being found in almost all the cahiers, or instructions 
of the deputies, were not subject to any discussion. 



CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 537 

1. Political : that sovereignty, emanating from tlie people, 
should be exercised only by the agreement of the national 
representatives with the hereditary chief of the State ; the 
urgency of establishing a constitution for France ; the ex- 
clusive right of the States-General to make the laws, which, 
before being promulgated, should obtain the royal sanction, 
to control public expenses, and to vote taxes ; the aboli- 
tion of financial immunities and personal privileges of the 
clergy and the nobility ; the suppression of the last rem- 
nants of serfdom ; the admissibility of all citizens to public 
employment; the responsibility of the agents of executive 
power. 

2. Moral : liberty of worship and of the press ; education 
of poor and abandoned children by the State. 

3. Judicial: uniformity of legislation and of jurispru- 
dence ; the suppression of exceptional jurisdictions ; the 
publicity of debates ; the amelioration of penal laws ; the 
reform of procedure. 

4. Administrative : the creation of provincial assemblies ; 
unity of weights and measures ; a re-division of the kingdom 
according to population and revenue. 

5. Economic : liberty of industries ; the suppression of 
internal customs-duties ; the replacing of the various taxes 
by a real estate and personal tax which would reach the 
products, but never the capital. Such were "■ the principles * 
of '89." 

Opening of the States-General (May 5, 1789). — On the 2d 
of May all the deputies assembled at Versailles, and were 
presented to the king. On the 4th they repaired in solemn 
procession to the church of St. Louis. 

May 5th, the States convened in the Salle des Menus. 
The king was on the throne, surrounded by the princes of 
the blood : the court stood on the steps. The rest of the 
hall was occupied by the three orders ; on the right of the 
throne sat the clergy, who numbered 291 members, of whom 
48 were archbishops or bishops, 35 abb^s or canons, 204 
curates, and three monks ; on the left the nobility, compris- 
ing 270 members, as follows : one prince of the blood, the 
Duke of Orleans, 240 gentlemen, and 28 magistrates of the 
superior courts ; last of all, at the lower end, on lower seats, 
the Third Estate, composed of 584 members, of whom 12 
were gentlemen, two priests, 18 mayors or consuls of large 
cities, 162 magistrates of bailUages or senechausses, 212 



538 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 

lawyers, 16 physicianSj 162 mercliants or landowners and 
farmers. 

The king expressed in a few noble words his wishes for 
the prosperity of the nation, and urged the States to work 
for it without allowing themselves to be carried away by the 
exaggerated desire for innovations. He was followed by 
the keeper of the seals, Barentin, and by the director-general 
of finances, Necker, who wearied the deputies with his long 
speech. Two passages of his discourse excited deep interest ; 
the one in which he made the acknowledgment of an annual 
deficit of 56,000,000, and 260,000,000 of anticipated receipts, 
and the other in which he declared that the king demanded 
that the States should aid him in establishing the prosperity 
of the kingdom upon solid foundations. 

The Deputies of the Third Estate declare themselves a 
UTational Constituent Assembly (June 17, 1789). — In the 
discussion which took place on the subject of the first ques- 
tion at issue, the verification of the powers of the deputies, 
the Third Estate declared that this verification should be 
made in common with the nobility and clergy, while the 
latter contended that each order should verify separately 
the credentials of its members. Upon the manner in which 
this question should be discussed depended the mode of delib- 
eration which should be adopted for others, and the question 
* between vote by orders and vote by members. Now if the 
vote was to be taken by orders, the majority would be assured 
to the clergy and nobility ; if by members, it would be se- 
cured to the deputies of the Third Estate. 

Eor five weeks the deputies of the Third Estate, masters 
of the common hall of session, employed all their energies 
in trying to induce the two higher orders to unite with them. 
At length a large number of cures joined them. Einally, on 
June 17, on motion of Abb4 Siey^s, the commons resolved 
themselves into a national assembly, "inasmuch as this 
assembly is already composed of representatives sent directly 
by at least ninety-six hundredths of the nation." Later it 
added to its title the word " constituent." 

The Tennis Court Oath (Ju^ie 20). — This declaration, 
which opened the Revolution, brought terror to the court 
and to the two higher orders. The clergy, by a small 
majority, decided to join the Assembly (June 19). The 
court urged the king to take violent measures ; announcing 
a royal sitting for June 22, he had the hall of the sessions 



CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 539 

guarded by soldiers, under pretext of making preparations. 
On June 20 Bailly, the president of the Third Estate, fiad- 
ing the door closed, convoked them in a tennis court. There 
the deputies took a solemn oath not to separate until they 
had established a constitution for France. The next day, 
the majority of the clergy having joined the Third Estate, 
the church of St. Louis was opened, and the Assembly began 
its deliberations. 

Fusion of the Three Orders (June 27) . — The royal 
session was then held, after a double check received by the 
government. Louis XVI. uttered threatening words ; he 
warned the deputies not to touch the ancient and constitu- 
tional rights of the three orders. "If you abandon me," 
he added, " I will work out the welfare of my people alone." 
He went out, commanding the orders to retire to their re- 
spective halls. The first two obeyed, with the exception 
of a few members of the clergy ; the third remained. The 
Marquis of Br^ze, grand master of ceremonies, came back 
into the hall and said, " Gentlemen, you have heard the 
orders of the king." Mirabeau rebuked him for his pre- 
sumption, and replied: ''Go and tell your master that we 
are here by the will of the x^eople, and that we will be sent 
away only at the point of the bayonet." The Assembly 
immediately proclaimed the inviolability of its members 
(June 23). The next day the majority of the clergy, and 
the day after forty-seven members of the nobility, with the 
Duke of Orleans at their head, united with the Third Estate. 
Necker advised the king himself to persviade the two higher 
orders to join the third. They obeyed, June 27, and were 
received as though their coming was the lasting pledge of 
a fraternal union. The Assembly then organized in thirty 
committees ; the deputies of the Third Estate chose all the 
presidents from among the ecclesiastics and nobles. 

The Taking of the Bastile (July 14) . — But the court was 
considering violent measures. Thirty thousand troops, un- 
der Marshal Broglie, were concentrated around Paris and 
Versailles, to protect the Assembly, it was said, and to main- 
tain order. There were some foreign regiments among them ; 
the Swiss and the Royal German, who were in great favor 
because their fidelity was not doubtful. The French regi- 
ments had been influenced by the ideas which were then in 
circiilation, and so much the more as the army itself was 
burdened by numerous abuses. Paris was disturbed at these 



540 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 

military measures. The focus of the discussion was the gar- 
den of the Palais-Royal. A table served as a rostrum. Here 
all the acts of the Assembly and the court were discussed. 
The Assembly demanded the removal of the troops, whose 
presence irritated the people. But instead they were sud- 
denly informed of the dismissal and exile of Necker (July 
11). The next day Paris burst forth like a volcano; the 
Palais-Royal resounded with exclamations of passionate 
anger ; a young man, Camille Desmoulins, boiling with indig- 
nation, jumped upon a table, pistol in hand, and harangued 
the citizens. The leaves of the chestnut trees in the garden 
were taken for cockades ; the crowd seized the busts of 
Necker and the Duke of Orleans, and bore them about in 
triumph. At several points it came into collision with the 
royal troops, and some bloodshed resulted. 

During these tumultuous disturbances the Assembly made 
some efforts for the recall of Necker, which Louis XVI. 
repelled. At the same time they sent a petition to the 
king, asking for a withdrawal of the troops. In Paris mat- 
ters were pushed more rapidly and farther. There was a 
sort of new municipality formed by the electors, which took 
the place of the old one in the confidence of the people. 
The electors were citizens, who, when the election for the 
deputation of Paris was terminated, had continued to assem- 
ble in order to finish the drawing up of their cahiers, and 
had even obtained a hall in the H6tel de Ville. Then, with- 
out commission, without warrant, and therefore illegally, but 
with an authority which was obeyed by the whole city, they 
constituted themselves, July 13, an administrative body. 
The people cried out for arms, so as to be able to defend 
themselves against the probable attack of the troops. The 
electors decreed that a guard should be formed from the 
middle class, four hundred men from each of the sixty dis- 
tricts. Fifty thousand'pikes were made in thirty-six hours ; 
thirty thousand guns, with sabres and cannons, were taken 
from the H6tel des Invalides. On the ISth the troops 
who occupied the Champs-]lSlysees were withdrawn, and the 
Parisians were masters of the city. " To the Bastile ! " 
became the general cry. The people rushed thither from all 
quarters. The governor, De Launay, had only two hundred 
Swiss or pensioners as a garrison ; however, the castle was 
so strong that the assailants had a struggle of several hours 
before they were able to take it. They gained an entrance 



CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 541 

after having lost nearly a third of their number, one hun- 
dred and seventy-one killed and wounded. De Launay was 
murdered by the populace. Flesselles, the provost of the 
merchants, and several soldiers, shared the same fate. Their 
heads were set on pikes and carried through the city. The 
populace had had a taste of blood, and the Revolution had 
its first joitrnee. 

The National Guard ; the Tricolor Cockade. — When the 
Duke of Liancourt informed the king of the storming of 
the Bastile, "Is this then a revolt ? " said he. "No, Sire," 
replied the duke ; " it is a revolution." The king went to 
the Assembly. When he appeared without guards and de- 
clared that he and the nation were one, that he confided 
himself to the National Assembly, that he would consent 
to the withdrawal of the German troops, and that he would 
recall Necker to the ministry, he was greeted with great 
applause, and an immense crowd followed him on his way 
to Paris. He entered the city in the midst of this crowd 
armed with guns, pikes, axes, and scythes, and dragging a 
few pieces of artillery. Bailly, who had just been appointed 
mayor of Paris, received the king at the gates and delivered 
to him the keys of the city. " They are the same," said he, 
"which were presented to Henry IV. He had reconquered 
his people. Sire ; now it is the people who have reconquered 
their king." Louis could even then have regained the hearts 
of his people, but he was not the man for such an emer- 
gency. The revolution continued in his very presence. La 
Fayette, being appointed general of the citizen-militia, has- 
tened to organize it under the name of National Guard, and 
gave it for its cockade the two old colors of Paris, red and 
blue, between which he placed white, the color of the mon- 
archy of Prance. 

Abolition of Privileges (night of the 4th of August). — 
The excitement had spread through the whole country. 
In many places the peasants burned the convents and 
castles so as to destroy the old titles and feudal charters. 
It became urgently necessary to prevent a second Jacquerie 
by great reforms. The nobility set the example : the Duke 
of Aiguillon, the Viscount of Noailles, Mathieu de Mont- 
morency, proposed the purchase of their privileges ; soon 
the emulation increased, all privileges were abolished ; 
seignorial rights, rights of jurisdiction, ecclesiastical tithes, 
personal, provincial, and municipal privileges. The feudal 
regime was destroyed, and the reign of equality began. 



542 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 



2L 

^ 



Opposition of tlie Court; Events of October 5 and 6, 1789. 

— One of the first acts of the Assembly was to draw up a 
declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen, in which 
' were set forth the principles upon which the constitution 
shoiild be established. Soon those who wished to divide 
the legislative power between two chambers, as in England, 
and give the king an unlimited veto, were vanquished. 
Influence was passing into the hands of men who had 
determined to go to the extreme of attack, as well as of 
resistance. Among those about the king, and in spite of 
him, the plan of resorting to force was resumed. The 
Flanders regiment was recalled to Versailles. A banquet 
given to its officers was turned into a royalist demonstra- 
tion ; the ladies distributed white cockades, and the tricolor 
cockades, it is said, were trodden under foot (October 1). 

Meantime Paris was dying of hunger. The winter had 
been severe, and there had been famine in several provinces. 
For three months Paris lived one day at a time, receiving 
to-day the flour for the bread of to-morrow. When the 
news of the festival at Versailles reached the ears of the 
famished populace, the slight provocation was sufficient to 
cause an insurrection. An army of women cried out, " Give 
us bread," and marched in a body to Versailles, thinking 
that they would have plenty if they could bring the king 
to Paris . The men followed ; La Payette, vainly opposing, 
was himself dragged along by the Parisian army. The 
multitude reached the courtyard of the chateau ; a struggle 
with the body-guard took place. The queen was saved only 
by the devotion of a few of her guards. During an absence 
of La Payette the chateau was forced. The king was obliged 
to show himself and promise to go to Paris. The queen 
determined to accompany him. The journey was not with- 
out danger for her. La Fayette led her out upon a balcony, 
and respectfully kissed her hand as a sign of reconciliation 
betAveen royalty and the revolution ; the crowd applauded. 
A few moments after, the roya,l family set out in the midst 
of this tumultuous crowd, which conducted them back as 
prisoners to the capital (October 5 and 6). The Assem- 
bly most unwisely followed, and installed itself first in. the 
archbishop's chapel, and afterwards in the riding-school 
near the Tuileries. From that moment the Assembly found 
itself, as well as the king, in the hands of the populace, to 
whom the success of the expedition to Versailles had been 



CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 643 

a fatal revelation that it was possible to substitute force 
for discussion. 

Popular Excesses ; the Emigration. — Already culpable ex- 
cesses had occurred. Those men of blood and destruction 
had ax^peared who are always to be found in popular dis- 
turbances. After the taking of the Bastile, De Launay and 
Flesselles had been killed, afterward the minister Foulon 
and the intendant Bertier ; then the king's guards. In the 
provinces the peasants were not always content with tear- 
ing u]3 feiidal title deeds, and pulling down towers and 
drawbridges ; they sometimes struck down the lords them- 
selves. Terror filled the court and the chateau. The most 
unwise counsellors of the king, the Count of Artois his 
brother, the princes of Cond^ and Conti, the dukes of Bour- 
bon and Enghien, etc., were the first to fly on the day after 
the storming of the Bastile : many others followed their 
example. They left the king alone in the midst of the 
populace, whose anger they had just aroused by bringing 
against the country the arms of foreigners. 

Double Movement which hastened the Revolution. — From 
October 6, 1789, to September 30, 1791, the day upon 
which the National Assembly dissolved, France was seized 
by two contrary movements. On the one hand, the Revolu- 
tion, begun by almost the whole nation, then guided for a 
time by the pupils of Montesquieu, who demanded for France 
only a constitution modelled upon that of England, tended 
to pass into the hands of popular tribunes, and was becom- 
ing each day more democratic. On the other, the court 
concealed its regrets under cover of a feigned docility, and 
by the suspicions and fears which its conduct inspired, 
hastened the advance of the Revolution, which was becom- 
ing implacable. 

Labors of the Assembly; Political and Civil Reforms. — 
The National Assembly pursued the course of its labors, 
pulling down with one hand, building with the other, with 
an enthusiasm sometimes rash, more often wisely inspired. 
After having despoiled the absolute monarchy of the right 
of making laws, establishing taxation, and making peace 
and war, it reduced the monarch to being only the chief 
functionary of the State. The dissenting faiths, the press, 
industry, and commerce were freed from all hindrances. 
Rights of primogeniture and entails were suppressed ; equal 
division of property among all the children of the deceased 



544 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 






was rendered obligatory ; confiscation abolished ; civil mar- 
riage provided for. Protestants and Jews were admitted 
to the enjoyment of all civil rights ; and the former re- 
covered such portions of their estates as had been incorpo- 
rated in the domains of the State ; the mulattoes of the 
colonies obtained civil rights. Finally, the Assembly abol- 
ished all titles, destroyed the orders of the nobility and 
clergy, reduced the nobles to the rank of citizens, the priests 
to that of public functionaries ; it established equality of 
penalties, and diminished the number of cases calling for 
the penalty of death : it declared all Frenchmen admissible 
to public employments and to military grades, all subject 
to taxation in proportion to their ability ; and it replaced 
the old provincial demarcations by the division into depart- 
ments (January, 1790). There were at first eighty-three 
of them, about equal in extent, the boundaries and names 
of which were not derived from any of the old traditions, 
but from natural features, the rivers and mountains. Each 
department was divided into districts, the districts into 
cantons, the cantons into communes or municipalities num- 
bering 44,828. 

The National Property; the Assignats. — Mirabeau, by 
showing that fearful bankruptcy was at the door, caused all 
citizens to vote unanimously, on the proposition of Necker, 
for a patriotic sacrifice of one-fourth of their revenues. 
This was not sufficient. The Assembly, considering the 
property of the clergy simply in the light of a deposit, 
decided that such property should revert to the nation. 
Then the clergy claimed to be proprietors by right of pre- 
scription, and in the interest of worship, of the hospitals 
and the poor. But the clergy having ceased to be a corpo- 
ration, had lost its quality of proprietor ; and the State took 
possession of the property by right of escheat (November 2, 
1789) ; the domains of the Church were placed at the dis- 
posal of the nation, and the minister was authorized to sell 
them at auction to the amount of 400,000,000, on condition 
that the State should provide in a suitable manner for the 
expenses of worship, the maintenance of its ministers, and 
the supj)ort of the poor, which was done. The lands of the 
crown, the property of the 6migr6s, confiscated later (July, 
1792), were also declared to be national property. 

To sell all this property, to distribute it among the na- 
tion, was a powerful means of attaching the country people 



CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 54o 

strongly to the Kevolutiou. Tlie State issued paper money 
having a forced currency which should receive preference in 
payment for national property. This was the origin of the 
assignois. 

Judicial Reforms. — The Assembly had destroyed the 
parliaments, the seignorial jurisdictions, and those of the 
royal provosts, baillis, and seneschals, and the court of 
accounts. But it laid down the fruitful principle of the 
separation of administrative and judicial powers, and it 
instituted for the whole kingdom a court of cassation, 
deciding appeals in the last resort ; for each department, a 
criminal court which was assisted by a jury ; for each dis- 
trict, a civil court ; for each canton, a judge of the peace and a 
bureau of conciliation ; in the principal cities consular courts ; 
and, for the offences of great public functionaries and for 
crimes against the welfare of the State, a high court of jus- 
tice (May, 1791). It provided for the framing of a uniform 
civil code. The magistrates were to be elected for ten years. 

Financial Reforms. — The Assembly had abolished the 
systems of taxation of the old regime, which were so multi- 
plied and so vexatious. But it declared that each citizen 
should contribute to the public expenses in proportion to 
his ability, and it decreed a tax upon patents, a x^ersonal 
tax, and a land-tax. It preserved, while simplifying them, 
the duties on registrations and mortgages, and the stamp- 
tax. It abolished internal custom-houses, but preserved 
those on the frontier ; and it allowed free importation of all 
raw materials and articles of food. It established a uni- 
form system of weights and measures. 

The Federation (July 14, 1790). — Thus were the desires 
for the political and social renovation of France realized. 
Unfortunately, the timidity of some, the impatience of 
others, and the crimes of a few caused them to fall short 
of their aim, and the beautiful edifice, prepared by the labors 
of a whole century, fell to the ground, to rise again, muti- 
lated, only after horrible convulsions. 

In the middle of the year 1790 many clouds, and some 
of them bloody ones, had already appeared on the horizon ; 
but the people still believed in the political success of this 
great undertaking, and there was. a moment of universal 
confidence and boundless hope at the Feast of the Federa- 
tion given by the Parisians in the Champs de Mars to the 
deputies of the army and the departments. The local fed- 



546 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 

erations, or patriotic unions of citizens and soldiers, sent 
one hundred thousand representatives to Paris on the 14th 
of July, 1790. In the midst of the Champs de Mars was 
erected the altar of the Fatherland; an immense crowd 
surged over the vast plain; La Fayette, who had been 
appointed commander of the national guards of the king- 
dom, was the first to take the oath of fidelity to the consti- 
tution, which was repeated by thousands of voices. The 
king repeated it in his turn in a loud voice. Sincere and 
unanimous acclamations rent the air. It was the haj)piest 
day of the Revolution; the spirit of concord and fraternal 
devotion filled all hearts. 

The Clubs : Jacobins, Cordeliers, etc. — Everywhere debat- 
ing clubs were formed, all of which tried to influence public 
opinion ; and some of them began to manifest much Adolence 
against the clergy, the court, and even the Assembly. The 
most active of these societies was the Breton Club, estab- 
lished at the convent of the Jacobins, whose name it took 
later. It was still under the influence of enthusiastic but 
moderate men ; later, Eobespierre reigned supreme in it. 
Biit there was also formed, at the convent of the Cordeliers, 
the terrible club directed by Danton. The press spread the 
flames : Camille Desmoulins, in his journal, Les Revolutions 
de Brabant et de Flandre ; the hideous Marat, in L'Ami du 
Peuple. The provinces were as much agitated as Paris ; 
there were disturbances, particularly in the south. The 
insurrection reached even the army. Necker, seeing his 
powerlessness, handed in his resignation (September, 1790). 

Death of Mirabeau (April 2, 1791). — The National 
Assembly felt itself morally obliged to interpose its author- 
ity in order to put a stop to anarchy. Mirabeau, who was 
daily acquiring a greater influence in it, began also boldly to 
demand the repression of the factions. He even approached 
the court and consulted with the king and queen, for the 
purpose not of destroying, but of arresting and consolidat- 
ing the Revolution. He believed himself strong enough, 
should he be called to the ministry, to restrain both the 
torrent of popular passions and that of aristocratic passions. 
Death deprived him of this test of his power. Worn out 
before he was old by -all sorts of excesses, he was still 
speaking, writing, and working actively when suddenly his 
strength failed him. As soon as it was known that a 
serious malady threatened his life, the street of Chauss^e- 



CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 547 

d'Antin, in which he lived, was crowded with an anxious 
multitude, who seemed crushed as by a public calamity. 
He expired the 2d of April, 1791, when not quite forty-two 
years old. The whole National Assembly, all Paris, indeed, 
escorted his remains to the Pantheon, where he was buried. 

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy. — After Mirabeau's 
death, Louis XVI. no longer heard moderate counsels, nor 
advice in favor of constitutional rule, which, moreover, was 
repugnant to all his habits, and of which the queen had a 
horror. The measures taken by the Assembly relative to 
the clergy were especially abhorrent to him. 

Already the clergy had ceased to be proprietors and to 
form a separate order in the State ; the number of convents 
had been restricted ; the taking of monastic vows had been 
suspended, and the legal sanction refused to vows previously 
taken. The Assembly went still further; it reduced the 
number of archbishoprics and bishoprics from one hundred 
and thirty-five to eighty-three, one for each department, 
and decreed that the electors who chose the administra- 
tors of the departments and the deputies of the National 
Assembly should also choose the bishops and cur^s (July 
12, 1791). 

This Civil Constitution of the Clergy, to which all the 
priests were obliged to take oath, disturbed the established 
ecclesiastical hierarchy. There was to be a Catholicism in 
Prance different from that in Eome, at least in respect to 
discipline, canonical institution, and spiritual jurisdiction. 
The measure was also politically unwise, as giving oppor- 
tunity to the adversaries of the new social order '' to oppose 
religious enthusiasm to the enthusiasm for liberty." 

A part of the provinces, indeed, turned against the Eevo- 
lution when the Pope forbade the taking of the oath (1791). 
A very large majority of the bishops refused to take it; 
those who took it formed, under the title of the sivorn or 
co7istUutional priests, the clergy recognized by the State. 
There were thus two worships : one public, in churches de- 
serted by the faithful ; the other, clandestine, in secret 
places, which had consequently much the greater spiritual 
influence. The nobles were already enemies of the Revolu- 
tion; the priests were now entering into the fight against it. 

Opposition of the King. — The king, too, opposed his veto ; 
he did not withdraw it until the expiration of 1n.ye months. 
In his own eyes, as well as in those of the court and of 



548 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 

Europe, lie was no longer free, and all his strength was gone. 
The court, however, still counted upon the fidelity of the 
army, and upon the foreign sovereigns, who were frightened 
at the sight of this tremendous revolution, which gave to 
the world such passionate speeches and such fearful exam- 
ples. Hence came the suggestion of flight and of appeal to 
the other sovereigns of Europe. 

Flight of the King (June 20, 1791).— The Count of Ar- 
tois and the Prince of Cond^, chiefs of the ^migr^s, were 
occupied abroad with finding means to deliver Louis XVI. ; 
the former, with the king's consent, undertook negotiations 
with the emperor Leopold, which resulted in a secret con- 
vention. The sovereigns of Austria, Prussia, Piedmont, 
Spain, and even Switzerland, engaged to station along the 
frontiers of the kingdom different bodies of soldiery, amount- 
ing to one hundred thousand men (conference of Mantua, 
May, 1791). 

Thus Louis XYI. authorized the blockade and invasion of 
France ; but first he wished to be free. He left the Tuil- 
eries in the night of the 20th of June with the queen, the 
dauphin, the princess royal his daughter, and his sister 
Madame Elizabeth, and the governess of the children, 
Madame de Tourzel, and proceeded rapidly on the road to 
Montmedy, along which Bouille had been ordered to place 
detachments of troops. But at Sainte-Menehould the king- 
was recognized by the postmaster, Drouet ; at Varennes he 
was stopped by the procureur of the commune and sent 
back under guard of commissioners sent from Paris. He 
re-entered the capital in the midst of an immense and silent 
crowd. 

Affair of the Champ de Mars (July 17, 1791). — The 
king was at first suspended from the exercise of his powers 
and placed under guard ; the constitutionalists of the Eeuil- 
lant Club, who still ruled the Assembly, declared that if he 
retracted his oath of allegiance to the constitution, and 
placed himself at the head of an army to make war against 
the nation, he should be considered as having abdicated. 
But already republican ideas had been openly uttered. A 
petition drawn up in strong language by the Cordeliers and 
the Jacobins, summoning the Assembly to pronounce the 
deposition of Louis, was placed upon the altar of the Father- 
land in the Champ de Mars to receive signatures. On the 
17th of July a considerable crowd assembled and riotous 



CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 549 

demonstrations were made. The Assembly ordered the 
commanding general of the National Guards and the mayor 
of Paris to disperse the crowd. La Fayette and Bailly 
marched their troops into the Champ de Mars. Attacked 
hy the mob, Bailly ordered his troops to fire upon them, and 
several were killed. 

The King re-established in his Functions (September 
14) . — The Assembly, fatigued by its long-continued labors, 
hastened to finish the constitution. On the 14th of Sep- 
tember the king accepted it, and solemnly swore to ob- 
serve it. The Assembly restored him to his former powers ; 
but could it give back to him the moral power which he had 
lost, or could he infuse into those about him his desire to 
live loyally under the new laws ? 

Constitution of 1791. — This constitution bestowed the 
legislative power upon a single and permanent assembly, 
which the king had not the right to dissolve, and which was 
renewed by general election every two years. This assem- 
bly alone had the initiative of laws and the right to make 
war ; it allowed the monarchy, together with the executive 
power, a suspensory veto. The deputies to the i^ational 
Assembly, the administrators of the departments, those of 
the districts, and the judges of the courts, were chosen by 
secondary elections. Suffrage was given to citizens twenty- 
five years of age, entered upon the rolls of the l^ational 
Guard, who had lived one year in the canton, and paid a 
direct tax equal to the local value of three days' work. 

The constitution of 1791, with its two millions of voters, 
was odious to the court and to Europe generally, as being 
too revolutionary; by those holding republican opinions it 
was considered too aristocratic. 

Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly (September 30, 
1791). — The Constituent Assembly concluded its career by 
proclaiming a general amnesty, and making efforts to recall 
the Emigres to their country. It has a right, in spite of its 
errors, to the gratitude of the nation ; for if its political re- 
forms have perished, almost all its civil reforms have sur- 
vived. 

The Constituent Assembly had, upon motion of Robes- 
pierre, forbidden the re-election of its members ; a disinter- 
ested but unwise measure, which would deprive the new 
assembly of the experience which the members of the Con- 
stituent had so dearly bought. 



550 THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. 



CHAPTER LX. 

THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. 
(1791-1793 A.D.) 

The Legislative Assembly. — The Legislative Assembly 
began its sessions on October 1, 1791, and ended tliem on 
September 21, 1792. It formed a stage of transition from 
the limited monarchy of the Constitutionalists to the dic- 
tatorship of the Montagnards. Its leaders, the Girondists,^ 
Brissot, Potion, Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonne, labored, in- 
deed, for the overthrow of royalty, but left to the extreme 
parties the initiation of the republic. , 

The Non-juring Priests and the Emigres. — Three great 
dangers threatened the Revokition, — the non-juring priests ; 
the Emigres, Avho had made Brussels, Worms, and Coblenz 
centres of intrigues against the country; and the foreign 
powers, who openly expressed their intention to re-establish 
Louis XVI. in his rights, by the famous declaration of Pil- 
nitz, signed by the king of Prussia and the emperor Leopold 
(August 27, 1791). The Legislative Assembly ordered 
that every non-juring priest should be deprived of his salary, 
and that the emigres who did not return within a fixed time 
should be declared conspirators, and the revenues from their 
property should be collected for the benefit of the nation, "but 
without detriment to the claims of their wives, their children, 
or their lawful creditors." Laws of proscription had begun. 

Declaration to the Foreign Powers. — To the foreign 
powers the Assembly, while professing its preference for 
peace, declared " that if the princes of Germany continued 
to favor preparations directed against France, the French 
would carry into their lands not fire and sword, but liberty. 

^ The Girondists were so named because among them, and distin- 
guished for their great eloquence, were the deputies from the depart- 
ment of the Gironde, Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gensonne'. The fanatical 
republicans were called Montagnards because they were seated in the 
Assembly on the upper benches on the left side. The Feuillants, or 
constitutional royalists, were seated on the (presiding officer's) right. 



THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. 551 

It Avas for them to estimate what •would be the consequences 
of this awakening of the nations" (November 29, 1791). 
The king transmitted to the foreign powers requests to 
withdraw their troops from the French frontiers, but they 
persisted. Thus the kings formed a coalition against France, 
and began a frightful war of twenty-three years. 

The Girondist Ministry (March, 1792). — At the approach 
of the war, Louis XVI. was obliged to call the Girondists 
to the ministry ; Servan was made minister of war ; Dumou- 
riez, a very able but not wholly trustworthy man, minister 
of foreign affairs. The portfolio of the interior was bestowed 
upon the honest Roland, whose wife has won a place among 
famous names of the Revolution. 

First Reverses ; Events of June 20, 1792. — War was sol- 
emnly declared on April 20, 1792, by Louis XVI. .against 
the emperor. Dumouriez wished to take the offensive. He 
counted upon an easy conquest of the Southern Netherlands, 
which had recently been in revolt against the house of Aus- 
tria. But the beginning was unfortunate ; for there was no 
confidence between the soldiers and the officers, the former 
continually suspecting the latter of treason. There was 
great consternation in Paris ; the Assembly, declaring that 
the country was in danger, voted the establishment of a 
camp of twenty thousand men near the capital, and pro- 
nounced the penalty of transportation against the non-jur- 
ing priests. The king refused to sanction this last measure, 
and dismissed the Girondist ministers. This moment was 
the last at which Louis could still have saved his crown by 
resolutely placing himself at the head of the Revolution. 
Far from doing this, he sent a secret agent in all haste to 
the coalitionists. This mission was not known, but the 
most violent attacks upon royalty were spread among the 
people by the thousand voices of the press, particularly 
by Marat's journal. The populace did not long resist this 
appeal. 

On the 20th of June, the populace, armed with pikes, 
advanced upon the Assembly, which made the mistake of 
opening its doors to them and allowing them to file before 
it, singing the famous (7a ira, with cries of Vive la nation ! 
Thence this mob marched to the Tuileries, burst into the 
palace, and summoned Louis XVI. to sanction its decrees. 
The king allowed the bonnet rouge to be put upon his head. 
The populace, satisfied at this, retired. This fatal day 



652 THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. 

inaugurated tlie Eeign of Terror. Soon after, La Fayette, 
who liad commanded one of the armies on the frontier, was 
proscribed and forced to leave France. His flight announced 
the triumph of the republicans. 

Manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick; Events of August 
10, 1792. — Meanwhile all France was in commotion; the 
federates of the departments were hastening up to form the 
camj) near Paris. The leaders of the Cordeliers and 
the Jacobins, Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, took advan- 
tage of their presence to make a iinal attack on royalty. 
Another imprudence on the part of the allies was of service 
to these leaders at this juncture. On the 26th of July, 1792, 
the Duke of Brunswick, general of the Prussian army, had 
published a manifesto announcing that he was coming, in 
the name of the kings, to restore Louis XVI. to power, and 
violently threatened all who opposed him. The challenge 
was accepted ; the mob (August 9) demanded the deposition 
of the king, and the next morning, well armed, with several 
sections of the National Guard, surrounded the Tuileries. 
The king, protected by his Swiss, and by some of the nobles 
and National Guards, could have defended himself ; but the 
National Guards passed over to the side of the people, and 
the king decided to take refuge in the midst of the Assem- 
bly. He succeeded in reaching it with his whole family, but 
not without great peril : refuge was given him in the report- 
ers' gallery. Meanwhile contradictory orders paralyzed the 
enthusiasm of the Swiss and of the nobles, who remained 
in the chiUeau, which after a short and bloody fight was 
entered and sacked. Its defenders were murdered in the 
apartments, in the gardens, in the neighboring streets ; two 
thousand persons perished. The victors marched in triumph 
into the hall of the Assembly, dictating to it two orders, — 
the deposition of the king, and the convocation of a national 
convention. It obeyed the second ; as for the first, it con- 
tented itself with suspending the executive power. The 
mob had scored another victory. 

Louis XVL left the Assembly only to be led to prison in 
the Temple. An unscrupulous faction, that of the Com- 
mune of Paris, became master, with Danton, then minister 
of justice, at its head. 

Massacres of September, 1792. — The Prussians had just 
taken Longwy ; the report spread that they were in Verdun. 
Consternation was general. But Danton believed that before 



THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. 553 

going forth to conquer foreign enemies it was necessary to 
exterminate those at home, at least to '' strike terror to the 
royalists." He ordered, or allowed the committee of sur- 
veillance to order, the frightful massacres of September 
2-6. A band of four or five hundred assassins, hired by 
the Commune, took possession of the prisons. Some of them 
constituted themselves a tribunal, others served as execu- 
tioners. The prisoners were called, and after a few ques- 
tions they were set at liberty or led into the courtyard of 
the prison and despatched with sabres, pikes, axes, and 
clubs. After having killed tte political prisoners, they 
murdered prisoners of all classes. The number of killed 
amounted to nihe hundred and sixty-six. The Assembly, 
terrified and powerless, had made no opposition. 

Victory of Valmy (September 20, 1792). — One hundred 
and sixty thousand Prussians and Imperialists had set 
out from Coblenz in July. To oppose them, France had 
only ninety-six thousand men, without discipline, without 
confidence in themselves or in their commanders, and who 
would not have been able to prevent the enemy from reach- 
ing Paris itself, if the enemy had been skilful and the march 
prom.pt. On the 22d.of August the allies had only reached 
Long^vy, which was taken ; Verdun opened its gates. Bruns- 
wick slowly extended his line behind the Meuse ; Dumouriez 
had time to come up, occupied the defiles of the Argonne, 
and formed in the rear three intrenched camps, into which 
he received the soldiers who came from every direction. 

In spite of the Prussian advance, Dumouriez persisted in 
remaining in the Argonne, intending to establish himself in 
the rear of the Prussians. The latter made a halt, in order 
to attack him. The principal struggle was for the posses- 
sion of the hill of Valmy, where Kellermann had posted 
himself with his raw conscripts, who stood the fire with a 
steadiness which surprised the enemy. The action was little 
but a cannonade of several hours, ending with a spirited 
repulse of the Prussian charge, by Kellermann's conscripts 
(September 20). 

The day after the battle of Valmy, the Convention assem- 
bled and proclaimed the republic. Its first reply to the 
negotiations proposed by BrunsAvick was worthy of the old 
Roman Senate : " The French Republic can listen to no 
proposition until the Prussian troops have entirely evacu- 
ated the French territory." The Prussians, decimated by 



554 THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. 

hunger and sickness, began their evacuation of France on 
October 1. 

Defence of Lille ; Victory of Jemmapes. — While Dumou- 
riez arrested at Valmy the invading army, and slowly fol- 
lowed up its retreat, Custine had taken the offensive on the 
Rhine, captured Speyer, Worms, and even Mainz. In the 
Alps, Montesquiou conquered Savoy, and Anselme the county 
of Nice. In the Netherlands the Austrians had attacked 
Lille with savage barbarity, but could not overcome the 
stanch bravery of that patriotic city. Dumouriez arrived 
with the army of Valmy. On the 6th of November he won 
the battle of Jemmapes, which gave France the Austrian 
Netherlands. On the 13th he entered Brussels. 

Thvis, in the first campaign, the new France, training her 
young soldiers under fire, repulsed the attack of kings, and 
laid her hand upon those half -French countries which Louis 
XIV. himself had not been able to secure. Goethe, who 
was present with the Prussian army at Valmy, as a spectator, 
declared that evening that then and there a new epoch in 
the history of the world began. 



THE CONVENTION. 555 



CHAPTER LXL 

THE CONVENTION. 
(1793-1795 A.D.) 

National Convention. — Eoyalty had succumbed. The 
Convention's first act was to proclaim the republic. But 
the conqvierors were divided; two great parties contended 
for the direction of the Assembly, — the Girondists, who had 
had the predominance in the Legislative Assembly, and who 
retained it some months longer in the Convention ; and the 
Montagnards, who were later to rule over it. The first Avas 
superior in eloquence and learning, the second had more 
passion and boldness. ISTourished upon the ideas of Jean 
Jacques Kousseau, they dreamed of a millennium of public 
virtjie for France ; even though society perished under the 
experiment, they wished to apply their theories. Between 
the Girondists and the Montagnards was the Plain, com- 
posed of moderate and feeble men, who were powerless 
against the momentum of the majority. 

Death of Louis XVI. (January 21, 1793). — After the 
affair of the 10th of August, the royal family had been shut 
up in the Temple. All communication with those outside 
had been forbidden. They lived thus for five months in 
the Temple under a surveillance always strict and often 
insulting. Louis XVI., formed rather for private life than 
for the throne, showed during his captivity a calm dignity 
and virtue which often touched the most brutal jailers. 

The constitution declared the king inviolable and author- 
ized no penalty against him but deposition, which had been 
already pronounced. But the situation was extreme, a 
coalition of all Europe was imminent, and the Convention, 
constituting itself both accuser and judge, ordered the king 
to appear before it (December 3), The venerable Male- 
sherbes, crowning a beautiful life by a noble act, demanded 
and obtained the honor of defending his old master. Saint- 
Just and Robespierre did not trouble themselves as to 
whether the accusations against the king were true or false ; 



556 THE CONVENTION. 

tliey loudly demanded his death as a measure for the public 
safety. The Girondists made only timid efforts to save 
him. 

Four questions were successively submitted to the vote : 
1. Is Louis guilty of conspiracy against the public liberty 
and an attempt against the general safety ? A unanimous 
affirmative. 2. Shall he have an appeal to the people ? 
276 affirmatives out of 745 voting. 3. What penalty shall 
be inflicted ? 387 votes for death unconditionally, 338 for 
detention or death conditionally, 28 absent or not voting. 
4. Shall his execution be delayed ? 310 yeas against 380 
nays. The Convention ordered the execution to take place 
Avithin twenty-four hours ; and on the 21st of January, 
1793, Louis XA^L, witli a courage and Christian resignation 
which posterity admires, mounted the scaffold. He tried 
to speak a few words to the crowd, but a roll of the drums 
drowned his voice. 

Thus a prince who had sincerely desired the welfare of 
his people died by the hand of the people, a victim of 
hatred the more implacable because it was believed to be 
legitimate. The fatal doctrine of the supremacy of the 
public safety was responsible for one more crime, for it was 
again forgotten that the real safety of nations comes from 
courage and magnanimity and not from the executioner. 
Executions could only lead to still further executions. 

First Coalition (1793-1797). — The death of Louis XVI. 
armed against France the states which were still hesitating. 
All sovereigns felt themselves threatened by the doctrines 
of revolutionary propagandism which the Convention prac- 
tised. Upon the proposition of Danton it had decreed that 
France should grant aid and fraternity to all peoples who 
should wish to recover their liberty (November 19, 1792). 
Pitt carried England into the coalition with her fleets and 
subsidies. France, threatened on all her frontiers, did not 
recoil. In February and March, 1793, she sent her declara- 
tion of war to England, the Netherlands, and Spain, and 
received that of the Empire. It was a new crusade, so to 
speak, of all European royalties and aristocracies, not to 
revenge Louis XVI., but to crush the principles of the new 
social order upheld by the Revolution. 

Extreme Dangers; the Terror. — In the western part of 
France agitation against the Eevolutionary government had 
commenced early. In October, 1791, it became necessary to 



THE CONVENTION. 557 

send troops against the Chouans, as the insurgents were 
called. But the Vendean peasants did not begin civil war 
for the cause of the throne and the altar till after the death 
of the king. At the same time that this danger appeared 
in the interior, reverses began abroad. The English at- 
tacked the colonies; Dumouriez, defeated at Neerwinden, 
evacuated Belgium and declared against the Convention. 
His soldiers refused to follow him, but the republic had 
none the less lost in him its best general. The army 
was again disorganized and the northern frontier was en- 
dangered. 

The Convention, however, made progress everywhere. 
Against enemies within, a committee of general security 
was created, which was to search for not only criminals, 
but suspected persons ; and a revolutionary tribunal to pun- 
ish them. A committee of public safety, a sort of dictator- 
ship of nine persons, controlled all public authority, so 
as to infuse into the national defence the most energetic 
activity (April 6). There was suspicion everywhere ; 
Robespierre firmly believed that the Girondists were trying 
to dismember France and throw it open to the foreigners ;. 
the Girondists suspected Marat, Robespierre, and Danton. 
An extraordinary state of distrust arose, from which fol- 
lowed the Reign of Terror. 

Proscription of the Girondists (June 2, 1793) ; Revolt in 
the Provinces. — Since the trial of the king, the Girondists 
and Montagnards had been keeping up a desperate struggle 
in the Convention; the one party wishing to arrest the 
Revolution, the other to hasten its progress. The most 
atrocious of the radicals was the hideous Marat. The 
Girondists, whom he accused of the crime of moderatism, 
attacked him. They obtained his indictment and had him 
summoned before the Revolutionary Tribunal. That terrible 
tribunal acquitted Marat, and the only result was to show 
the weakness of the Girondists. An attack against Robes- 
pierre was not more successful, and alienated Danton, who 
at once fought against them. The party of the Mountain, 
controlling the sections of Paris through the Commune and 
the Jacobins, armed them against the Convention, which, 
under the pressure of the riot, voted for the arrest of thirty- 
one of the Girondists. Some of them, as Vergniaud and 
Gensonn^, awaited their sentence ; others escaped from their 
persecutors and attempted to raise the departments. The 



558 THE CONVENTION. 

greater part of tlie cities in the south declared against the 
Convention ; Toulon was delivered over to the English with 
the whole Mediterranean squadron (August) ; Paoli tried 
to deliver up Corsica to them; Cond6, Valenciennes, and 
Mainz were lost (July), and the Spaniards invaded Eous- 
sillon. At the same time a terrible scarcity of food was 
causing internal disorganization. 

Energy of the Measures for Defence. — But the Convention 
displayed a desperate energy. It attempted to regulate 
prices (September), and established the most severe laws 
against monopolizers and speculators. Commercial liberty, 
political liberty, civil liberty, were all suppressed. The 
entire country submitted to the dictatorship of the Com- 
mittee of Public Safety. The law against suspects threw 
three hundred thousand people into the prisons, and Barrere 
declared, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, 
that France must become one vast camp. Twelve hundred 
thousand men were levied. In a few months Carnot organ- 
ized fourteen armies. Powder and steel were hastily pre- 
pared. Bells were melted to make cannon. Bordeaux and 
Lyons were reduced to submission, the latter city after a 
resistance of sixty-three days. Bonaparte, then a captain 
of artillery, recaptured Toulon (December) ; the Vendeans 
were driven out of Nantes (June), and Jourdan, at the head 
of the principal army, held the allies in check. 

The Guillotine. — Meanwhile nobles and priests, proscribed 
as "suspects," perished in great numbers on the scaffolds 
erected in all the cities : Carrier, Collot-d'Herbois, Couthon, 
Fouch6, Barras, and others, exceeded in the provinces the 
most horrible proscriptions ever recorded in history. The 
murder of Marat by Charlotte Corday rendered the Terror 
more implacable. Queen Marie Antoinette (October 16), 
Madame Elizabeth, Bailly, the Girondists (October 31), 
the Duke of Orleans, General Custine, the great chemist 
Lavoisier, Malesherbes, and a thousand others were guillo- 
tined. Cartloads of victims, without regard to age or station, 
were daily dragged to execution. 

Execution of the Hebertists and Dantoiiists (March and 
April, 1794). — Disputes began to arise among the Monta- 
gnards themselves. The most violent of them, the Hebert- 
ists, all-powerful in the Commune, attempted to make the 
Terror the regular government of France, professed Atheism, 
and caused the Goddess of Eeason to be placed on the altar 



THE CONVENTION. 559 

of Notre-Dame. The Dantonists attacked both the anar- 
chists of Hebert's party, and the Committee of Public Safety, 
whose tyranny they eloquently denounced. Robespierre, 
who with Couthon and Saint-Just had the upper hand in 
the Committee, first denounced the H^bertists, whom he 
accused of corrupting the nation by propagating atheism, 
and of conspiring with foreigners. They were executed 
(March 24, 1794) ; twelve days after, Danton, Desmoulins, 
and those who were now called the Moderates, suffered the 
same fate on pretext of Orleanism (April 8, 1794). 

The 9th Thermidor. — Meantime Robespierre, in his turn, 
began to think of checking the Revolution, so as to con- 
struct upon the bloody ruins of the past a society arranged 
according to his own ideas. At this, CoUot-d'Herbois, Bil- 
laud-Varennes, and others, were roused to fierce opposition. 
Robespierre proposed a reorganization of the Revolutionary 
Tribunal, rendering easier the process of judicial murder 
by effacing the last vestiges of legal forms, and placing the 
Contention at his mercy (22 Prairial). Then he withdrew 
from the government and retired to the Jacobin Club, await- 
ing the opportunity to strike a decisive blow. Meantime 
the Terror redoubled. In forty-seven days, fourteen hun- 
dred persons perished. 

Such a horrible state of affairs could not last. The out- 
cry of public pity arose against the authors of these abom- 
inations, and especially against Robespierre. His enemies 
made the most of this movement of public opinion ; they 
accused him of aspiring to the dictatorship. Gn the 8th 
Thermidor the struggle took place in the Convention. 
Robespierre wearied the Assembly by an interminable 
defence, and irritated it by threats. The debate was 
stormy, and for a long time indecisive, but finally the Plain 
went over to the enemies of Robespierre. Next day the 
struggle in the Convention was rencAved. Robespierre was 
arraigned with Couthon and Saint-Just, his brother and 
Lebas. But the Commune rose in insurrection, delivered 
the prisoners, and conducted them in triumph to the Hdtel 
de Ville. Open war now broke out between the rival pow- 
ers, the representatives of Paris and those of Prance. The 
Convention acted with energy and determination, outlawed 
Robespierre and his friends, and marched powerful forces 
upon the H6tel de Ville, who seized the condemned men. 
Robespierre was severely wounded, perhaps by his own 



560 THE CONVENTION. 

hand. All were led to the scaffold amid the insults of the 
mob, who beheld in their punishment the end of the Eeign 
of Terror (9-10 Thermidor, 27-28 July, 1794). In the four 
hundred and twenty days during which the Terror had 
lasted, 2669 sentences of condemnation had been pronounced 
by the Eevolutionary Tribunal and carried out, not counting 
the victims put to death in the provinces. 

Abolition of the Revolutionary Laws. — The fall of Kobes- 
pierre became the signal for a reaction, which, in spite of 
its excesses, allowed France time to breathe. The guillo- 
tine ceased to be the chief means of government. The 
importance of the Committees of Public Safety and Gen- 
eral Security was considerably diminished; the law of 
Prairial was repealed; the prisons were opened; at Paris 
alone ten thousand captives were set free. The Convention 
assumed the powers of the Commune of Paris, and the 
Jacobin Club was closed. Carrier and other leaders in 
the massacres were sent to punishment. CoUot-d'Herbois, 
Barr^re, and Billaud-Varemies were transported to Cayenne, 
after a final effort on the part of the Jacobin party on the 
1st Prairial (May 20, 179.5). 

Glorious Campaign of 1793. — The great success of her 
arms had happily consoled Prance in her grief. Carnot, as 
a member of the Committee of Public Safety, had organized 
victory. The strategists of the coalition were slow and 
methodical. Carnot, instead of scientific manoeuvres which 
the new Prench generals had not yet learned, and which the 
French conscripts could not comprehend, demanded that 
the army should strike rapid blows, marching right on with 
bayonets fixed, without considering the numbers of the 
enemy. This system of tactics, well suited to the inex- 
perience and enthusiasm of the raw French troops, was 
also the best for cutting the long and slender cordon with 
which the coalition had surrounded France ; it was success- 
ful. At the end of August, 1793, France was invaded on 
all sides, and her situation seemed desperate ; at the end of 
December she was almost everywhere victorious. 

Loss of Conde, Valenciennes, and Mainz (May- August). — 
After the defection of Duniouriez, the allies, instead of 
marching together upon Paris, were thinking only of their 
own individual interests. Conde and Valenciennes were 
invested. Custine had allowed the Prussians to surround 
Mainz. After three months' sieges the allies took the three 



i 



THE CONVENTION. 561 



towns ; but meanwhile all France had risen, and the prepa- 
rations for defence were carried on with an energy propor- 
tioned to the danger. 

The allies lost another month in preparing for new opera- 
tions. The English then marched on Dunkirk, and the 
Austrians laid siege to Quesnay. Houchard defeated the 
English at Hondschoote (September 8). Five days after 
he defeated the Dutch, but a panic drove his army back 
in disorder to Lille. He was removed, and he, as well as 
Custine, was sent to the scaffold. The allies, now masters 
of the Scheldt and of the country between the Scheldt and 
the Sambre, endeavored to take Maubeuge, so as to assure 
themselves of the possession of the upper Sambre. France 
seemed in great peril ; but Carnot promoted Jourdan, a simple 
chief of battalion at the beginning of the campaign, to the 
command of the army of the North, and Jourdan defeated 
the Prince of Coburg at Watignies, and blockaded Maubeuge. 

In the Vosges the French armies at first lost some battles. 
But the youthful Hoche was placed at the head of the army 
of the Moselle, Pichegru at the head of the army of the 
Ehine, and Saint-Just and Lebas, coming to the seat of 
operations, inspired the troops and people with fresh energy. 
Hoche and Pichegru defeated the Austrians and compelled 
them to recross the Ehine, while the Prussians, thus exposed 
on their left, fell back to Mainz. Hoche wintered in the 
enemy's country, in the Palatinate. In Italy the French 
and Piedmontese contended for the chain of the Alps. On 
the side of the Pyrenees the republican army fell back 
before the Spaniards (December). 

Successes and Defeat of the Vendeans (1793). — But at 
this moment the civil war was drawing to an end. The 
republicans had recaptured Lyons (October) and Toulon 
(December) . La Vendue resisted longer. The revolt of the 
peasants of that province began at Saint-Florent on the 
Loire. In March, 1793, the young men of the canton were 
summoned thither to be drafted into the army. They muti- 
nied, drove off the gendarmes, and pillaged the H6tel de 
Ville. A peasant named Cathelineau represented to them 
that the Convention would take summary vengeance upon 
them. He persuaded them to follow him, hastened from 
village to village, collected volunteers, and at the head of 
this force captured some posts, arms, and cannon. A game- 
keeper, Stofflet, joined him with a similar following. From 



562 THE CONVENTION. 

a band of insurgent peasants, tlie force grew into an army. 
Led by the noblemen of the province and the two popular 
chiefs, the Vendeans took Saumur (June), and in order to 
make their way to the sea, — that is, to join hands with the 
^migr^s and the English, — they captured Nantes. Catheli- 
neau was killed in this last attack, but the Vendeans re- 
mained masters of their country and drove the republicans 
out of it by two victories in July and one in September. 

A considerable republican force was then sent into La 
Vendue, and with them Kl^ber, who was a host in himself ; 
but divided commands resulted in the defeat of all four 
divisions of this army. The Convention ordered its gen- 
erals to end the war before the 20th of October. In eleven 
days the Vendeans sustained four defeats. KMber finally 
routed them before Chollet (October 17). Eighty thou- 
sand Vendeans, men, women, children, and old men, whom 
this disaster had driven to the Loire, crossed the river and 
endeavored to raise Anjou, Maine, and Brittany; they even 
went as far as Granville, where they hoped to obtain assis- 
tance from the English. But Granville repulsed them, and 
they then turned towards Angers (December), to return to 
La Vendue. This time the Loire was well guarded; they 
were thrown back upon Le Mans, defeated in that city, and 
entirely overcome in Savenay (December 28). This was 
the end, so far as field operations were concerned. 

Campaign of the Summer of 1794 ; Fleurus. — Pichegru, 
displacing Hoche by intrigue and then transferred to the 
North, lost two months in fruitless and bloody struggles on 
the Scheldt and the Sambre. Fortunately, Carnot renounced 
in season the idea of attacking the enemy in front, and 
determined to threaten their communications and line of 
retreat by bringing up Jourdan with forty-five thousand men 
from the Moselle to the Sambre. Eour times the republican 
columns crossed the Sambre ; four times they were repulsed. 
But it was necessary, at whatever cost, to obtain possession 
of Charleroi. A fifth passage was successful. Charleroi 
capitulated, and the Prince of Coburg lost the battle of 
Fleurus (June 28), which reopened the Low-Countries to 
the French. Pichegru drove the English towards Holland ; 
Jourdan drove the Austrians back behind the Meuse. Du- 
gommier won a decided success in the Pyrenees, and Dumer- 
bion captured the camp of the Piedmontese. The way into 
Italy and Spain was now open as well as the Low-Countries. 



THE CONVENTION. 563 

Winter Campaign of 1794-1795; Conquest of the Low- 
Countries ; Invasion of Spain. — Winter put a stop neither 
to the operations nor to the success of the armies. Jourdan 
drove the Austrians again beyond the Rhine (October), 
whither the Prussians were compelled to follow them. 
Then the four French armies of the North, of the Sambre 
and Meuse, of the Moselle, and of the Ehine, were stretched 
along the great river. Winter had set in and was very 
severe. The temperature fell to twenty-seven degrees be- 
low zero (Cent.). The soldiers, ragged and unpaid, but 
supported against all miseries by their moral energy, 
marched onward, crossing the canals and rivers, and driv- 
ing before them the English and Dutch. On the twentieth 
of January, 1795, they entered Amsterdam. Squadrons of 
hussars hastened to the Texel to take the Dutch fleet, fas- 
tened in by the ice. Pichegru established in Holland the 
Batavian Republic. Thence he could turn the Prussian 
defences on the Rhine; Northern Germany lay open to 
attack. 

Dugommier forced the passage of the Eastern Pyrenees 
(November), but perished at the moment of victory. As a 
consequence of this victory, one of the strongest places in 
Europe, Figueras, opened its gates. Moncey, at the other 
extremity of the Pyrenees, at the same time effected the 
conquest of Guipuzcoa ; Spain was invaded on two sides. 

Peace with Prussia and Spain (1795) ; ftuiberon. — Prussia 
and Spain were alarmed at their defeats ; Prussia, besides, 
was at this moment much occupied with the final partition 
of Poland. Both powers asked for peace (treaty of Basel, 
April and July) ; Prussia ceded her provinces on the left 
bank of the Rhine; Spain, the Spanish portion of San 
Domingo. This peace was the recognition of the republic 
and the Revolution by two of the great states of Europe. 

England, Austria, Sardinia, and the Empire remained in 
line. The first, in order to arouse again in the French prov- 
inces of the West the forces of the royalist party, landed in 
the peninsula of Quiberon two divisions of Emigres. Hoche, 
called from the army of the Rhine to pacify La Vendue, 
destroyed them (July, 1795). 

Reverses on the Sea ; the Vengeur. — If the genius of war 
on land is born of inspiration, maritime warfare demands 
science and long practice. Now, the brilliant naval staff 
which had conquered England in the American war had 



564 THE CONVENTION. 

emigrated ; the fleet was left without commanders ; hence 
its inferiority in great naval battles. On the 1st of Jnne, 
1794, Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse attacked, with twenty-five 
ships, manned by peasants, an English fleet of thirty-two 
sails, in order to protect an immense convoy of grain. The 
convoy passed, but the fleet was defeated and lost six ves- 
sels. As one of them, the Vengeur, sank in the waves, the 
crew went down singing the Marseillaise. Martinique, Gua- 
deloupe, and even Corsica were taken by the English. There 
were, however, some successes gained in privateering. 

Constitution of the Year III. (1795). — Meanwhile the 
Convention, having triumphantly survived the disturbances 
which followed the 9th Thermidor, abolished the democratic 
constitution of 1793, which had never yet been put in opera- 
tion, and vested the legislative power in two councils : the 
Council of Five Hundred, whose duty was to propose laws, 
and the Council of Ancients, whose of&ce was to examine 
and accept them. The executive power was given to a 
directory of five members, renewed by fifths each year, 
nominated by the legislature, and responsible. All power 
was divided. It was hoped by this means to escape a dicta- 
torship and form a moderate republic ; yet the result of the 
constitution of the year III. was only a feeble and anarchical 
republic. 

The 13th Vendemiaire (October 5, 1795). — The 9th 
Thermidor had been followed by such a reaction that the 
royalists hoped for an early restoration. » They believed 
that the approaching elections would give them a majority. 
But the Convention decided that two-thirds of the members 
of the new legislative body should be taken among the 
members of the Convention, so that the royalists could be 
only a very small minority in it. The royalists incited the 
sections of the National Guard to outbreak, and marched 
upon the Tuileries, where the Convention was sitting. Bar- 
ras, who was appointed to defend it, chose as his lieutenant 
a young general who had performed important services 
before Toulon, Napoleon Bonaparte. They had only six 
thousand or seven thousand soldiers. Bonaparte rapidly 
fortified the Tuileries ; the troops of the sections, received 
with a furious fire of grape-shot, were routed at once and 
put to flight. In October, 1795, the Convention declared 
its mission ended. 

Principal Achievements of the Convention. — In the midst 



TEE CONVENTION. 565 

of its intestine commotions and its victories, the Convention 
had. prepared a uniform code for all France, had decreed a 
system of national instriiction, and the establishment of the 
Normal School, the Polytechnic School, the Lyc^es, the 
Schools of Medicine, the Conservatory of Arts and Trades, 
chairs of Modern Languages, the Bureau of Longitudes, 
the Conservatory of Music, the Institute, the Museum of 
Natural History, and had established the unity of weights 
and measures (metric system).^ By the disorderly issues 
of assignats (44 billions) it had broken down all fortunes, 
and by the law fixing a maximum of prices, it had ruined 
commerce; but by the sale of the "national property," 
which formed a third of the territory, it had laid open to 
the fruitful labor of the new proprietors immense domains 
until then unproductive ; and by the systematic consolida- 
tion of the public debt, it had prepared, for better days, 
public confidence in the credit of the State. 

^ The Convention had replaced the Gregorian calendar by the repub- 
lican calendar. The new era began on the 22d of September, 1792. 



666 THE DIRECTORY. 



CHAPTER LXII. 

THE DIRECTORY. 
(October, 1795-November, 1799.) 

Situation of the Republic at the End of 1795. — Tlie Coun- 
cil of Ancients and that of the Five Hundred organized on 
the 27th of October, and elected as directors five regicides, 
La R6veill6re-Lepeaux, Rewbel, Letourneur, Carnot, and Bar- 
ras ; the first three honest and laborious men, but thoroughly- 
incapable of their duties ; the fourth a superior man. The 
new government established itself in the palace of the 
Luxembourg. The situation was difficult. Local govern- 
ment was paralyzed. The treasury was empty, the assignats 
fallen into the most complete discredit. Commerce and 
industry no longer existed ; the armies were in need of food, 
clothing, and even ammunition. But three years of such a 
war had made soldiers and generals ; Moreau commanded 
the army of the Rhine ; Jourdan, that of the Sambre and 
Meuse ; Hoche, that in the West, and Bonaparte, who was 
to eclipse them all, had just been put in command of the 
army of the Interior, which he soon after exchanged for 
that of the army of Italy. 

Napoleon Bonaparte. — Napoleon Bonaparte, born at 
Ajaccio on the 15th of August, 1769, was a son of Charles 
Bonaparte, of an Italian family, and Letizia Eamolino. 
His father died in 1785 ; his mother died in Rome in 1839. 
They had eight children ; Napoleon was the second. Ad- 
mitted to the military school of Brienne in 1779, he passed, 
five years after, to the military school of Paris. The follow- 
ing year he obtained the rank of lieutenant in a regiment 
of artillery. He was at first an earnest partisan of the 
Revolution, When the army of the Convention attacked 
Toulon, the representatives of the people made him a chief 
of battalion and gave him the direction of the artillery 
during the siege. He seized a point on the shore of the 
roadstead whence the English fleet could be fired upon. 
Their retreat thus cut off, the English hastened to abandon 



THE DIBECTORT. 667 

Toulon. Bonaparte, promoted to be brigadier-general as a 
reward for this service, went to command the artillery of 
the army of Italy. After the 9th Thermidor he was placed 
on the unattached list ; the 13th Vend^miaire brought him 
prominently into public notice, and Carnot gave him the 
command of the army of the Alps. He was not yet twenty- 
seven years old. 

Campaign of Bonaparte in Italy (1796-1797). — Carnot's 
plan for the campaign of 1796 was bold and wise. Jourdan 
and Moreau, having each from seventy thousand to eighty 
thousand men, were to enter Germany, the first by the val- 
ley of the Main, the second by that of the ISTeckar, to reach 
the basin of the Danube and descend thence upon Austria, 
whi6h was to be threatened by Bonaparte from Italy. 
Thus, Moreau in the centre, Jourdan and Bonaparte on the 
two wings, were to effect a combined forward movement 
and converge if possible on the road to Vienna. But the 
three armies were separated from each other by mountains. 

When Bonaparte reached the army of the Alps, the 
generals, Mass6na, Augereau, and the rest, already dis- 
tinguished by important services, received the new-comer 
coldly. He called them together, explained his plans to 
them, and convinced them at once. To the soldiers Bona- 
parte issued one of his magnificent proclamations, which 
electrified all hearts. 

Bonaparte had thirty-eight thousand men against sixty 
thousand Sardinian and Austrian troops. But he resolved 
to take the offensive, and did so boldly. Instead of wearing 
out his forces among sterile rocks where no important blows 
could be struck, he turned the flank of the Alps and crossed 
them at the lowest point of the range, the Col de Monte- 
notte, while Beaulieu, the Austrian general, awaited him on 
the seashore ; by this skilful movement he placed himself 
in front of the weakest point of the Austrians and Piedmon- 
tese. He pierced their centre at Montenotte (April 11 and 
12), established himself between them, and in order to 
separate them more completely, defeated them successively. 
He was then master of the road to Turin, upon which the 
Piedmontese had retreated, and of that to Milan, by which 
the Austrians were falling back. But he did not pause ; he 
crushed the Sardinian army and compelled them to lay down 
their arms by the armistice of Cherasco, which he signed 
ten leagues from Turin (April 28), and which, followed 



568 THE DIRECTORY. 

by a treaty of peace, gave " France Savoy, Mce, and Tenda, 
and afforded him a secure base for tlie offensive march, which 
he meditated. 

Having got rid of one enemy, he turned towards the 
other. He crossed the Po behind the Austrians at Pia- 
cenza (May 9), defeated one of their divisions there, and, 
ascending the Adda, found the Austrians in a strong posi- 
tion at Lodi. The laridge of Lodi was carried by a brilliant 
charge (May 11). Beaulieu tried still to preserve the line 
of the Mincio. Bonaparte deceived him as to the real point 
of attack^ forced the passage at Borghetto (May 30), and 
finally drove back into the Tyrol that army which but a 
little while before was threatening the French frontiers. 
At the same time he extorted from the dukes of Parma and 
Modena 2,000,000 fr. apiece, ammunitions, and pictures. The 
Pope promised 21,000,000, 100 pictures, and 500 manuscripts. 
He levied a war contribution from Lombardy of 20,000,000, 
and sent 10,000,000 of it to the Directory. He stopped at 
the Adige, an excellent line of defence, covering Lombardy, 
and besieged Mantua (June 3). 

Meantime Wurmser, the best of the Austrian generals, suc- 
ceeded Beaulieu. Wurmser had 60,000 men against 30,000, 
but he divided his forces. Raising the siege of Mantua in 
order to have all his forces united, Bonaparte, by succes- 
sively moving all his forces from his right to his left, and 
from his left to his right, crushed both divisions of the Aus- 
trian army, at Lonato and at Castiglione. Wurmser, threat- 
ened with being cut off from the Tyrol, had only time to fall 
back ; then he received reinforcements, which increased his 
army again to 50,000 men ; he then commenced a second cam- 
paign. While he was descending the valley of the Brenta, 
Bonaparte hastened to meet him in the valley, attacked him 
there, surrounded him between the French army and the 
river, nearly captured him, and finally blocked him up in 
Mantua (September). After the defeat of Jourdan and the 
retreat of Moreau, Austria sent a fourth army, of 60,000 
men, under Alviuzi, into Italy. Alvinzi recruited 60,000 
more men. The army of Italy seemed lost; the whole 
peninsula behind it was in revolt, and this time the enemy 
advanced cautiously. Forty thousand men arrived in front 
of Verona and occupied a strong position, from which Bona- 
parte was unable to dislodge them. Apparently retreating 
from the town, he descended the Adige, and crossed it at 



THE DIRECTORY. 569 

a lower point, in order to turn tlie flank of the Austrians. 
Here, in the marshes of Arcole, after three days' furious 
fighting (November 15-17), in which he was in great per- 
sonal danger, he compelled Alvinzi to retreat. 

Six weeks later (January, 1797) Alvinzi, again reinforced, 
reappeared with 60,000 men. Selecting the sole point in 
the mountains at which the two chief divisions of the Aus- 
trian army could effect a junction, Bonaparte, though he 
had only 16,000 men against 40,000, established himself at 
the point of junction, and inflicted upon both divisions the 
overwhelming defeat of Rivoli. Suddenly he learned that 
Provera, with 20,000 men, had passed the Adige, and was 
seeking to release Wurmser. He left Joubert to pursue 
Alvinzi, and hastened against Provera with Massena's divis- 
ion, which had fought on the 13th before Verona, had 
marched that night to the assistance of Joubert, had just 
fought all day long on the 14th at Eivoli, and now marched 
all night and all day on the 15th to fight again on the 16th 
before Mantua. The most celebrated soldiers had never 
before accomplished anything like this. Provera was com- 
pelled to lay down his arms. Wurmser, reduced to the last 
extremity, surrendered Mantua (February 2) . Thus in ten 
months 55,000 Frenchmen had conquered more than 200,000 
Austrians, had taken prisoners more than 80,000, killed and 
wounded more than 20,000 ; they had fought twelve pitched 
battles, more than sixty skirmishes, and crossed several 
rivers. War, thus conducted, and for a glorious cause, is 
a magnificent spectacle. 

The regency of Modena and the Pope having shown 
sympathy for the Austrians, Bonaparte deposed the duke, 
erected his states into the Cispadane Republic, and marched 
upon Eome. Pius YI., trembling, signed the peace of Tolen- 
tino ; it cost him 30,000,000, the Eomagna, which, with the 
legations of Ferrara and Bologna, was united to the Cispa- 
dane Eepublic, and Ancona, which was occupied by the 
French (February 10, 1797). 

Retreat of Moreau (October, 1796). — The armies of Ger- 
many had not been either so skilfully or so fortunately con- 
ducted. Jourdan and Moreau at first drove the Austrians 
before them ; but Carnot caused them to act separately, and 
the Archduke Charles, boldly leaving Moreau with a part of 
his forces, and joining Wartensleben in the valley of the 
Main, defeated Jourdan, and drove him back behind the 



570 THE DIRECTORY. 

Lahn. This was the same manoeiivre which, had proved 
so advantageous to Bonaparte in the opening of the cam- 
paign in Italy. It was equally successful, but had not the 
same result, for Moreau was not Beaulieu, and the archduke 
was not Bonaparte. He lost a precious opportunity by not 
attacking Moreau at once in the midst of Bavaria ; Moreau 
slowly fell back through the Black Porest, and without 
having left behind him a single caisson or a single man, in 
that glorious retreat of twenty-six days, he re-entered Alsace 
unmolested on the 18th of October. 

Last Victories of Bonaparte in Italy; Preliminaries of 
Leoben (1797). — Fortunately the marvellous victories of the 
army of Italy compensated for this reverse. The Archduke 
Charles, having defeated Jourdan, arrived with a fourth 
army which stretched along the Carinthian and Julian Alps 
from the upper Adige to the mouth of the Tagliamento. 
Bonaparte, with Joubert and Massena, cut this half-circle 
at three points. Then, while Joubert and Massena effected 
a junction in the Puttersthal, Bonaparte pushed on to 
Klagenfurt and finally to Leoben; his advance guard, on 
the summit of the Sommering, could perceive, twenty-five 
miles to the north, the hills of Vienna. 

At this moment Hoche and Moreau began operations. 
The first, at the head of the army of the Sambre and Meuse, 
crossed the Rhine in face of the enemy ; in four days he 
marched thirty-five leagues, won three battles, and fought 
five minor engagements, and was about to surround the 
Austrian army. Desaix, one of Moreau's lieutenants, crossed 
the river with equal success, and drove the enemy back into 
the Black Forest. If Bonaparte had known of these victo- 
ries, he would have refused all negotiations ; but the court 
of Vienna, in alarm, hastened to sign the preliminaries of 
Leoben (April 18), agreeing that France should have Bel- 
gium, and Austria the provinces of Venice on the mainland 
as compensation for the Milanese. Venice having broken 
out in insurrection in Bonaparte's absence, four thousand 
men entered the city and established there a provisory re- 
public. The senate of Genoa was also overthrown, but 
remained an independent Ligurian Bepublic, England now 
offered of her own accord to negotiate, and conferences, for 
peace were opened at Lille. 

Internal Anarchy. — While the republic was victorious 
abroad, at home the situation was g'^owing worse under a 



THE DIRECTORY. 571 

divided and incapable government. In the beginning it bad 
been strong enough to overthrow two attempts of the two 
extreme parties ; the first in La Vendee, suppressed by 
Hoche (February and March, 1796), the second that of the 
communist Baboeuf (May). A conspiracy of the Jacobins 
in September proved fruitless. 

But the Directory was growing weak, and the disorder 
was extreme. The territorial mandats which had replaced 
the assignats (March, 1796), had fallen into equal deprecia-' 
tion. The financial crisis became frightful ; dishonest acts 
were imputed to the whole Directory. The country, like 
the government, was going at random. So lately escaped 
from the Terror, it ru.shed into pleasure ; dissipation and 
speculation were unbridled; bands of robbers increased. 
It seemed that the State would be utterly destroyed. 

Progress of the Royalists. — The royalists believed that 
it would be an easy matter to overthrow this tottering gov- 
ernment. The Emigres returned in great numbers, and 
openly labored for a counter-revolution. Emboldened by 
their success in the elections for the renewal of the Coun- 
cils, they made two of their partisans presidents of them, 
and another, a member of the Directory. A monarchical 
restoration in favor of the Bourbons seemed imminent. 
Louis XVIIL, brother of Louis XVI. (the latter's son, 
called Louis XVII., had died in prison in 1795), believed 
himself on the point of being recalled. But the country 
was not so ready to restore what it had so lately struck 
down. The armies especially were republican, and from 
the banks of the Adige, Bonaparte promised his aid against 
the royalists. 

The 18th Fructidor, Year V (September, 1797).— In the 
night of the 18th Fructidor, Augereau led into Paris twelve 
thousand men, who surrounded the place where the Coun- 
cils were sitting. The minority in each, on invitation from 
the Directory, expelled their colleagues and condemned 
fifty-three of them to transportation, together with two 
directors, — Carnot, Vho did not wish to resort to violence 
against the royalists ; and Barth^lemy, who favored them. 

Moreau, falling under suspicion, was displaced ; the two 
armies of the Khino were confided to Hoche, in whom the 
republicans trusted, but who died at twenty-nine, a few 
days after having received this important command. 

Treaty of Cainpo-Formio (1797). — The Directory pro- 



572 THE DIRECTORY. 

posed to continue the war. But Bonaparte desired peace. 
In spite of the government, which justly refused to abandon 
the Venetians to Austria, he signed the treaty of Canipo- 
Pormio, the most glorious that France ever concluded 
(October 17, 1797). The emperor ceded Belgium, the pos- 
session of the left bank of the Rhine, and the Ionian Isles ; 
he accepted the establishment of the Cisalpine Eepublic 
( Milan, Modeua, and Bologna) ; as compensation, Venice, 
Istria, Friuli, and Dalmatia were given to him. Bonaparte 
had calculated wisely ; his fame was increased by this peace 
jnore than by fresh victories. After having regulated the 
affairs of Italy, he returned to Paris, where the government 
and the people gave him a triumphal reception. The army 
of Italy shared in the honors which Avere showered upon 
their general. 

Expedition to Egypt (1798-1799). — The war against the 
English continued. Hoche had wished to wage war directly 
against England ; this was the true policy. But Bonaparte 
caused the Directory to renounce this enterprise. He had, 
however, firmly resolved to keep himself prominently before 
the people. He proposed an expedition which he had 
thought of while in Italy, the conquest of Egypt. From 
the borders of the Nile he hoped to attack England in 
India, and strike her in the heart by destroying her com- 
merce and her empire. In order to risk forty thousand of 
the best soldiers of France at so great a distance, one ought 
to be master of the sea, and the English covered it with 
their fleets. It was consequently running a great risk, but 
it is often thus that the public mind' is fascinated and mas- 
tered. The expedition was prepared in the greatest secrecy. 
The fleet, composed of fourteen ships of the line and a great 
number of transports, left Toulon the 10th of May, carrying 
thirty-six thousand men, almost all old soldiers of Arcole 
and Eivoli, together with savants, artists, and engineers. 

At first the expedition was entirely successful. On the 
voyage it captured Malta ; the knights did not even de- 
fend themselves. The fleet successfully eluded the Eng- 
lish admiral, Nelson, and a landing was effected without 
hindrance on the 1st of July, four miles from Alexandria ; 
that city was, in a few. hours, carried by assault. Bona- 
parte marched immediately upon Cairo, where the formi- 
dable army of the Mamelukes, the rea,l masters of the 
country, had concentrated its principal strength. Eepulsed 




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THE DIRECTORY. 573 

in a first engagement, the Mamelukes fell back upon Cairo 
and prepared for a general battle. The French army fol- 
lowed them thither and paused, seized Avith admiration, in 
front of the Pyramids which rose in the vicinity of that 
city. ''Soldiers," cried Bonaparte, "from the height of 
those Pyramids, forty centuries look doAvn upon yon ! " In 
order to fight against this innumerable and valiant cavalry 
of the Mamelukes, he formed his divisions into squares and 
so placed them as to support each other. In vain the 
Mamelukes made the most brilliant and daring charges ; 
they could not break those lines of iron and fire. The 
occupation of Cairo and the submission of Lower Egypt 
were the result of this victory (July 21). 

Bonaparte hastened to organize the country ; he respected 
the faith and the customs of the inhabitants, but he also 
assured the well-being of his soldiers, and established the 
Institute of Egypt, the members of which began the scien- 
tific conquest of that mysterious country. The news of a 
disaster to his fleet surprised Bonaparte in the very midst 
of these enterprises. He had ordered Admiral Brueys to 
leave the roadstead of Aboukir. A fatal delay allowed the 
English time to come up. The French line had not been 
formed neaf enongh to the shore ; half the English fleet 
■could pass between it and the land, while the other half 
passed between it and the offing. This bold manoeuvre was 
attempted by oS^elson. It was successful. All the French 
vessels, except four, motionless at anchor, were obliged to 
sustain on both sides the fire of the Avhole fleet of the 
enemy, which advanced slowly, destroying the French ships 
one by one. The French fleet, with the exception of fonr 
vessels which escaped to Malta, v/as entirely destroyed 
(August 1). The Egyptian expedition, which was to have 
given the French the control of the Mediterranean, was, 
after this, only an adventure, instead of being the beginning 
of great achievements. 

The French army was imprisoned in its conquest, and the 
Porte declared against it. Bonaparte first completed the 
occupation of the whole country, and suppressed a revolt 
in Cairo. Then, sure of his conquest, he advanced towards 
Syria, whence he could cover EgjqDt, and threaten Constan- 
tinople or India at will (February, 1799). He at first suc- 
ceeded, and dispersed, at the battle of INIount Tabor, a large 
Turkish army. But at the siege of Acre all his genius 



574 THE DIRECTORY. 

failed, for want of material means, against the courage of 
the Turks and the tenacity of the English commodore, 
Sidney Smith. He led his exhausted and diminished army 
back into Egypt. There he again sigpally defeated his 
enemies. The army of Egypt had nothing more to fear, but 
it also had nothing more to do, and this inaction annoyed 
Bonaparte. When he learned that a second coalition had 
been formed, that Italy was lost, that France was about to 
be invaded, he gave the command to Kleber, and embarking 
in a frigate, boldly crossed the whole Mediterranean through 
the midst of the English cruisers, and in October landed at 
Frejus. 

Maladministration of the Directory. — The Directory, by 
turns weak and violent, on the 22d Floreal (May 11, 1798), 
annulled the election of a number of deputies. A few 
months before, it had gone into actual bankruptcy. The 
interest of the debt was 258,000,000 ; the Directors repaid 
two-thirds of it with bonds on the national property, which 
lost five-sixths of their nominal value; the other third 
was consolidated and inscribed in the " great book of the 
public debt." They increased the excitement to the highest 
degree by a forced loan of 100,000,000, and by the law of 
hostages against relatives of Emigres and of former nobles, 
a law which destroyed the security of one hundred and fifty 
thousand families. Abroad they provoked Europe by im- 
prudent acts. They overtu.rned the temporal power of the 
Pope and the aristocracy of Bern ; they created discontent 
in the Batavian, Cisalpine, and Ligurian republics ; and 
Avere unable to secure the olaedience of their generals. 

Second Coalition (March, 1799-March, 1802). — The sight 
of this internal disorganization, the withdrawal of Bona- 
parte and the best army, decided the powers of the continent 
to listen to the words of Pitt. England, Austria, Russia, a 
part of Germany, Naples, Piedmont, Turkey, and even the 
I3arbary States, united against France. The country was 
exposed to the most serious dangers. The Councils decreed 
the law of conscription, which forced into military service 
all citizens of between twenty and twenty-five years, and 
ordered a levy of two hundred thousand men. The king of 
Naples, by an imprudent attack, brought upon himself a 
crushing defeat. The Parthenopean Republic was immedi- 
ately proclaimed (January, 1799). Joubert had, at the 
same time, driven the king of Sardinia from Piedmont 
(December, 1798). 



THE DIRECTORY. 575 

Reverses in Italy and in Germany (1799). — But the 

coalition had set on foot 360,000 men ; the Directory had 
only 170,000, divided into five armies ; Macdonald and 
Brune were at the two extremities, at Naples and in Hol- 
land ; Jourdan and Scherer on the wings, in Germany and 
in Italy ; Mass^na in the centre, in Switzerland. Since the 
last war a democratic revolution had been going on in that 
country, and Switzerland had signed with France a treaty 
of alliance, which permitted the French to occupy the coun- 
try with military forces ; Mass^na therefore advanced as far 
as the Ehine, while Scherer approached the Adige. Jourdan 
crossed the Ivhine, and advanced between the Danube and 
Lake Constance in order to keep abreast of Massena, while, 
the latter, crossing the Ehine, sent his light horse into the 
upper valley of the Inn to support Scherer through the Tyrol. 
But the Archduke Charles stopped Jourdan at Stockach, 
and compelled him to fall back to the Rhine. 

In Italy, Scherer, after wearying his troops by a succes- 
sion of ill-conceived movements, and being defeated near 
Verona, lost his head and retreated behind the Adda. 
Massena was forced to follow this retrograde movement; 
he retired behind the line formed by the Linth, Lake Zurich, 
and the Limmat. Meanwhile thirty thousand Russians had 
joined the sixty thousand Austrians in Italy, and Suwarof 
commanded the combined army. Moreau, replacing Scherer, 
was defeated at Cassano, but made a masterly retreat upon 
Turin, then upon Genoa. Macdonald returned from Naples 
in all haste, but was severely defeated in attempting to 
effect a junction with Moreau. 

Victories of Brune at Bergen (September 19), and of 
Massena at Zurich (September 25, 26, 1799). — Meanwhile, 
however, Brune defeated at Bergen (September 19), an 
army of forty thousand English and Russians which had 
landed in Holland, and forced them to seek refuge on their 
vessels ; Mass6na won the immortal victory of Zurich. For 
])()litical reasons, the Aulic Council at Vienna resolved to send 
Suwarof and his army into Switzerland, the archduke to the 
Ivhine. Massena surprised the allies in the midst of their 
manoeuvre, when the archduke had already quitted Switzer- 
land, and Suwarof had not yet entered it. Throwing him- 
self upon Zurich, he there crushed a Russian corps, and put 
to route another corps which was guarding the Linth ; when 
Suwarof arrived from the Saint-Gothard, after much fatigue 



576 THE DIRECTORY. 

and great losses, lie found himself confronted by victorious 
troops who threw him back into the frightful gorges, whence 
he only escaped with the loss of half of his men. This glo- 
rious succession of manoeuvres, called the battle of Zurich 
(September 25 and 26), cost the allies thirty thousand 
men and the defection of the Russians, who withdrew from 
the coalition. Bonaparte never gained a more glorious 
battle. 

The 30tli Prairial (June 18, 1799) . — France, indeed, was 
saved ; but the country nevertheless blamed its government 
for having exposed it to such great perils, and forced three 
of the directors to resign (30th Prairial, June 18, 1799). 
But it was of little use to change men, for the cause of the 
evil was in the institutions themselves. Anarchy continued. 
It was no longer as before the 18th Eructidor the royalists 
who tried to profit by it, but the remnant of the Jacobins. 
The government triumphed over this party without diffi- 
culty, yet the Directory continued to be despised. It was 
at this juncture that Bonaparte landed at Frejus. 

The 18th Brmnaire (ISTovember 9, 1799). — His return was 
greeted with transports of joy, which showed him that he 
was master of the situation. He appeared reserved and 
impenetrable. He shut himself up in his small house in the 
Kue Chantereine, and seemed to live only for his sister, for 
his wife, Josephine de Beauharnais, and for his colleagues of 
the Institute. Meantime he was observing and calculating. 
The country repelled the royalists because it did not wish to 
return to the old regime; it repelled the Jacobins, because 
it did not wish to return to '93. It was determined to pre- 
serve the Revolution. But the Revolution was twofold, 
social and political; it had been undertaken in order to 
secure equality and liberty. Anarchy was endangering both ; 
to save the one France postponed the other ; she cast her- 
self into the arms of Bonaparte ; she asked him to guarantee 
the social conquests of the Revolution by establishing order ; 
liberty would return to her later. And Bonaparte accepted. 

" To save France," said Si^y^s, " a head and a sword are 
needed." For Bonaparte he complacently reserved the rdle 
of the sword. On the 18th Brumaire the majority of the 
Council of the Ancients ordered the removal of the two 
Councils to Saint-Cloud, and confided the execution of the 
decree to Bonaparte, who received the command of all the 
troops. Three members of the Directory, Si6y6s, Roger- 



THE DIRECTORY. 577 

Ducos and Barras, handed in their resignations ; tlie other 
two were put under guard in the Luxembourg. At the same 
time Paris was filled with troops. The next day Bonaparte 
went to Saint-Cloud. He went first to the Ancients, then 
to the Five Hundred. At the hall of the Five Hundred, he 
was greeted with furious cries. " Down with the dictator ! 
Down with the bayonets ! " was heard from all parts of the 
• hall as he entered, followed by a few grenadiers. He was 
surrounded, threatened ; his grenadiers were obliged to de- 
fend him. His brother Lucien, who presided over the 
Council, went out of the hall, and, iu the name of the peo- 
ple, summoned the soldiers to expel these agitators. Then, 
at the order of Bonaparte, General Leclerc entered the As- 
sembly; the drum drowned the voices of the protesting 
deputies, and the hall was emptied without bloodshed. The 
Council of the Ancients resigned the executive authority 
into the hands of three provisional consuls, Bonaparte, 
Si^yfes, and Eoger-Ducos ; and ordered two commissioners to 
revise the constitution (November 9 and 10, 1799). 

The Revolution was abdicating in favor of the military 
power, and was about to enter with it upon a new phase of 
existence. At home it was to take root permanently in the 
country ; abroad, its principles were to spread over Europe 
with the victories of the French armies. But afterwards 
was to come disaster, and France was to escape, mutilated 
and bleeding, from the terrible hands of the powerful genius 
who had now just seized upon her. The 18th Brumaire was 
the beginning of that long chain of prosperity, glory, and 
unexampled power, but also of lamentable errors and re- 
verses, which form the history of the Consulate and the 
Empire. Besides, it was still another act of violence. How 
were law-abiding citizens, interested in wise modification of 
their institutions, to be formed, when for ten years no 
change had been effected except by violent overturnings ? 

End of the Eighteenth Century. — Not long after this mili- 
tary revolution, was ended the eighteenth century, an age 
at once both sceptical and credulous, gentle and terrible, 
light in morals and frivolous in wit, but which produced the 
great thought -that society, as well as man individually, 
should grow continually better. Whatever may have been 
its faults, much may be forgiven this century "which, in 
material affairs, created the sciences by the help of which 
man has acquired an unlooked-for domination over nature, 



578 THE DIRECTORY. 

and singularly increased his prosperity; which in moral 
affairs secured tolerance, sought for justice, proclaimed 
rights, demanded civil equality, recommended human fra- 
ternity, abolished cruelty in penal institutions, did away 
with the arbitrary administration of public affairs, endeav- 
ored to make reason the guide of the intellect, liberty the 
guide of governments, progress the ambition of peoples, and 
law the sovereign of the whole world" (Mignet). 



THE CONSULATE. 679 



CHAPTER LXIII. 

THE CONSULATE, 
(November, 1799 -May, 1804.) 

Constitution of the Year VIII. — Siey^s had ready a 
skilfully constructed constitution. But his too complicated 
machinery suited neither the time nor General Bonaparte, 
who had the genius and the strength to rescue France from 
her chaos. The plan of Sieyfes was therefore abandoned, 
and on December 15, 1799, the constitution of the year 
VIII. was promulgated. Eoman forms were still in fashion. 
The executive was to consist of three consuls, elected for ten 
years and re-eligible ; but the first alone possessed all the 
prerogatives of power, the other two had only a consultative 
voice. These three consuls were Bonaparte, Cambac^rds, 
and Lebrun. 

The executive power was to be no longer subordinate to 
the legislative. The laws, prepared, by order of the consuls, 
by a council of State appointed by them, were discussed by 
the Tribunate, composed of one hundred members, and passed 
or rejected by the Corps L^gislatif, which numbered three 
hundred deputies. The Tribunate merely made suggestions 
which the government might or might not take into consid- 
eration. When a law was brought before the Corps L^gis- 
latif, three councillors of State, as orators of the govern- 
ment, and three orators of the Tribunate, discussed it before 
them. They then voted in silence. Thus, while the Con- 
vention, distrusting the executive poAver, had divided it by 
creating five directors, the constitution of the year VIII., 
distrusting the legislative, divided it, giving the initiative 
of laws to the government, their discussion to the tribunes, 
and the voting of them to the legislators. The Conservative 
Senate, composed of eighty members, appointed for life, 
watched over the maintenance of the constitution, judged 
all acts contrary to the organic laws, and chose the members 
of the Tribunate and of the Corps Ldgislatif. 

The electoral power continued in existence, but was trans- 



580 THE CONSULATE. 

formed. All Frenchmen of twenty-one years of age were 
electors ; the electors of each arrondissement chose one in 
ten of their number to draw up a list of communal notables ; 
from this list the First Consul selected the public function- 
aries of the arrondissement. The citizens named upon the 
communal list chose one in ten of their number to form a 
departmental list, from which the First Consul chose the 
functionaries of the department. Those named upon the 
departmental list formed, from one-tenth of their number, 
the national list. All those who composed this list were 
eligible to national public functions. It was from this third 
list of notables that the Senate was to choose the members 
of the Tribunate and of the Corps Legislatif. The assem- 
blies which discussed and voted upon the laws were thus 
the product of an election of four degrees. There was only 
an appearance of representative government, and even the 
least discerning could perceive dictatorship behind this 
transparent shadow of liberty. Being submitted for the 
approval of the people, the constitution of the year VIII. 
was accepted by 3,011,107 votes against 1567. 

Administrative Reorganization. — The First Consul has- 
tened to propose numerous organic laws to the Tribunate 
and to the Corps Legislatif. One of the most important 
was that concerning the government of the department ; he 
called the intendants again into existence, under the Roman 
name of prefects, and concentrated in the hands of these 
functionaries, who depended directly upon the minister of 
the interior, the whole executive authority. The prefect 
was aided by an executive council, and by the conseil gene- 
ral, a sort of legislature which expressed the wishes of the 
department. The sous-prefet had also a conseil cV arrondisse- 
ment; the mayor of each commune, a municipal council. 
Each arrondissement, or sous-prefecture, had a civil court 
and a local receiver ; each department, a criminal court and 
a receiver-general ; twenty-seven courts of appeal were scat- 
tered over the country, and a Court of Cassation maintained 
uniformity of jurisprudence. This administrative organiza- 
tion of France was the completion of the work of Louis XIV., 
effected by carrying centralization to its utmost limits ; it 
has in its general characteristics survived all subsequent 
revolutions ; local liberties have been always stifled or kept 
weak. This excessive centralization resulted at first from 
the need of establishing national unity ; it was of immense 



THE CONSULATE. 681 

advantage in time of conflict against all Europe. Yet a 
great many misfortunes have arisen from it, because Paris 
lias been able to impose her will, her caprices, and her revo- 
lutions upon the whole country. 

Efforts to reconcile and extinguish Parties. — Upon leav- 
ing the first council held after the 18th Brumaire, Siey^s 
said, " Gentlemen, we have a master." But excepting the 
small number of those who, like him, perceived the dictator 
under the robe of the consul, and excepting the royalists 
and the Jacobins who dreamed of two impossible things, all 
France greeted the new coup cVetat with satisfaction. The 
consuls showed a very conciliatory spirit. Many political 
exiles and prisoners were recalled or set free. The proscrip- 
tion of nobles ceased ; the churches were reopened. 

To the astonishment of the incredulous, this powerful 
soldier showed himself a consummate administrator. In a 
few days he had touched everything, and everything had 
received new life. Trade revived. The country districts 
were freed from robbers, and the revolutionary disturbances 
of the South were appeased. A royalist insurrection was 
crushed by energetic measures. But the press was kept 
under rigid restrictions. 

The armies contained many republicans ; but they had 
had so much to complain of from the misgovernment of 
the Directory that its forcible overthrow was well received 
by them. Bonaparte, besides, occupied himself actively 
in reorganizing them and relieving the frightful suffering 
which was thinning their ranks. Moreau received the 
command of the united armies of the Rhine and Switzer- 
land ; Mass^na, the army of Italy, the destitution of which 
was beyond conception. 

Marengo (June 14, 1800). — The next day after the 
constitution of the year VIII. had gone into effect, the 
Eirst Consul, setting aside all the usages of diplomacy, so 
as to make a greater impression upon public opinion, had 
written to the king of England a dignified and able letter, 
making overtures of peace in the interest of both nations. 
He wrote a similar one to the emperor of Germany ; but 
Austria, which had the control of the whole of Italy, and 
England, which did not propose at any price to leave Malta 
and Egypt to France, rejected these overtures. 

War, therefore, was unavoidable. Bonaparte prepared 
to make it glorious and decisive, content with having won 



582 THE CONSULATE. 

public opinion to his side by his moderation. In Italy, 
Mass^na had only thirty-six thousand men against one hun- 
dred thousand Austrians under Baron Melas ; he retired to 
Genoa, and there sustained a memorable siege. While he 
kept the Austrian army there nearly two months, great 
events, rendered possible by this heroic defence, were being 
accomplished behind him. The Austrian line of operations 
extended from Strassburg to Nice ; but Switzerland, still in 
the hands of the French, projected like a bastion into this 
line, and laid it open to attack. By deceiving the enemy 
with regard to their movements, the French could pass out 
from Switzerland by the upper Rhine behind Marshal Kray, 
or by way of the Alps behind Baron Melas. Bonaparte con- 
ceived this double design ; Moreau only imperfectly executed 
his part of it, but he forced the Austrians into their en- 
trenched camp at Ulm. While they were held there, Bona- 
parte, by one of tlie greatest military combinations which had 
ever been executed, himself crossed the Alps. Deceiving his 
enemies as to his plans, he secretly put troops in motion 
from all parts ; they received ammunition, horses, guns, 
and clothing on the road, and marched slowly and quietly 
towards Geneva and Lausanne. By the beginning of May 
all these corps were in Switzerland, and Bonaparte, follow- 
ing from the Tuileries the movements of Melas, predicted 
to his secretary in advance the remainder of the campaign. 

He quitted Paris the 6th of May and hastened to Geneva. 
The pass of the Great St. Bernard, though very difficult, 
was resolved on. The cannon were dismounted and placed 
on sledges ; the pieces of the g-un-carriages and the ammu- 
nition were made up into loads, to be carried on the backs 
of mules. The passage began in the night of the 14th and 
15th of May. On the following days divisions, gun-car- 
riages, and ammunition passed forward continually. The 
guns and howitzers presented much difficulty. They were 
placed in the hollowed trunks of pine trees ; a hundred 
men drew each of these ; the bands played in the difficult 
passes, or sounded the charge ; and all passed over. But 
an unforeseen obstacle stopped the movements of the army. 
The impregnable fort of Bard blocked the way. The First 
Consul flanked it by means of a goat-path which the infan- 
try and cavalry followed. As for the artillery, the road 
below the fort was covered at night with straw and rubbish, 
the pieces wrapped with tow, the cannoniers dragged them, 



THE CONSULATE. 683 

and tlie dangerous defile was crossed during the night under 
the enemy's guns. Forty thousand men were thus brought 
into Italy; twenty thousand more, who were arriving by 
other passes, were soon to join them. Bonaparte had, by 
this manoeuvre, established himself behind Melas ; he had 
cut him off from Austria; he had frightened him by his 
boldness ; he had conquered him before he had even met 
him. 

When Melas learned that Bonaparte had entered Milan, 
in the midst of transports of admiration and enthusiasm, he 
rapidly concentrated all his forces in order to escape before 
being surrounded. Shut up between the Po, the Apen- 
nines, and the French army, he decided to offer a pitched 
battle. It took place not far from Alessandria, as Bona- 
parte had predicted at the Tuileries, near Marengo, the 
name of which it has rendered immortal. The battle was 
terrible, desperate. Bonaparte did not have all his forces at 
command ; for, in order to prevent Melas from escaping him, 
he had spread his troops around him like a vast net. There 
were three battles fought that day. The first, early in the 
morning, was lost. The second also seemed likely to prove 
unsuccessful. Melas, believing he had gained the victory, 
left his chief of staff to despatch the enemy, and sent cou- 
riers to carry the good news to all the cabinets of Europe. 

It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and the second bat- 
tle was still lost. But Desaix, near Novi, had heard the 
terrible cannonading ; he returned, and appeared on the field 
of battle with his division at the moment when the Aus- 
trians, formed in close column, were endeavoring to gain the 
road to Piacenza, their only path to safety. Bonaparte then 
commenced a third action. He threw Desaix with six thou- 
sand fresh troops on the front of the Austrian column, while 
all the rest of the army fell upon the flanks. Desaix fell. 
But his soldiers rushed furiously upon the Austrians to 
avenge him. The Austrian column, its head shattered, was 
cut in two. One portion was taken, the other routed. Panic 
seized the Austrian cavalry. Soon all fled, and Melas was 
obliged to capitulate. Italy was reconquered (June 14, 
1800). 

Hohenlinden (December 3, 1800). — In Germany, Moreau 
still acted on the offensive, forced the Austrians to quit Ulm, 
and penetrated as far as Munich. Austria concluded to 
negotiate; but England unexpectedly sent new subsidies. 



584 THE CONSULATE. 

Bonaparte determed to conquer peace by a winter campaign. 
Moreau was ordered to recommence hostilities, and to cross 
the Inn and march upon Vienna, while Macdonald was to 
march from the Grisons into the Tyrol, and Brune was to 
force the Mincio and the Adige. Macdonald and Brune 
succeeded ; at the same time the Austrian ruler was driven 
out of Tuscany, and the Neapolitans from the Papal States. 
Moreau, with a magnificent army of one hundred thousand 
men, perfectly organized, was at Munich, holding the line 
of the Isar, while the Austrians were holding that of the 
Inn. Between the two rivers extended a great forest, with 
the village of Hohenlinden in the centre. The two generals 
took the offensive at the same time. But the archduke was 
obliged to change his line of march, and Moreau, falling 
upon him at Hohenlinden, inflicted a terrible defeat. Eight 
thousand men killed and wounded, twelve thousand prison- 
ers, eighty-seven pieces of cannon captured, were the result 
of this brilliant victory. Six days later, Moreau crossed the 
Inn and marched on to Lintz and Steyer. He was at the 
gates of Vienna. Austria arrested his progress by promis- 
ing to accept all the conditions of France. 

Peace of Lun^ville (February, 1801). — Two months after 
the battle of Hohenlinden, peace was signed at Lun^ville. 
The emperor accepted as a basis the conditions of the treaty 
of Campo Formio, which gave the left bank of the Rhine to 
France, and pushed the Austrian frontier beyond the Adige. 
He recognized the Batavian, Helvetian, Ligurian, and Cisal- 
pine republics, the last possessing the whole valley of the 
Po, and the new kingdom of Etruria, created for the Span- 
ish house of Parma, at the expense of the Grand-duke 
of Tuscany, the emperor's brother. The court of Naples 
also submitted, and Italy was entirely at the disposal of 
the French. Spain undertook to force Portugal to desert the 
English alliance. The Czar, filled with admiration for the 
First Consul, offered him his friendship. Thus in fifteen 
months France, reorganized internally, had broken up the 
second coalition and imposed peace upon the continent. 
Unfortunately the new Italian States were without strength 
in themselves ; France was foyced to interfere continually 
in their affairs, and these encroachments were destined to 
bring on a new war. 

Continuation of Hostilities with. England. — England per- 
sisted in her hatred. But the ideas, which twenty years 



THE CONSULATE. 585 

before had armed all the states of the North against her, 
reappeared in the councils of the kings. The Czar, Paul I., 
won over by the adroit flatteries of the First Consul, with the 
king of Prussia, and the kings of Sweden and Denmark, had 
renewed the league of Armed Neutrality (December, 1800). 
England responded to it by laying an embargo upon all 
vessels of the allied powers which were found in her ports, 
and in March, 1801, admirals Nelson and Parker destroyed 
the Danish navy before Copenhagen. This bold stroke, and 
the assassination of the Czar, Paul I., put an end to the 
league of the Neutrals. Alexander, son and successor of 
Paul I., abandoned his policy, and France found herself left 
alone to defend the liberty of the seas. But the English 
had so superior forces upon the sea, that France could not 
even send aid to Malta, which they were blockading, nor to 
the army of Egypt, which they were threatening. 

Loss of Egypt. — Kleber, to whom Bonai^arte had left 
Egypt, was an excellent general ; but, discouraged by the 
arrival of a Turkish army of eighty thousand men, he 
signed with Commodore Sidney Smith the Convention of 
El-Arish, by which the troops were to be taken back to 
France on English vessels. The British cabinet disavowed 
its representative and exacted that the army should surren- 
der unconditionally. K16ber then recovered all his energy ; 
he overwhelmed the Turks at Heliopolis, recaptured Cairo, 
and re-established the French domination in Egypt, but was 
assassinated on the day of Marengo. His successor, Menou, 
was entirely defeated, and forced to evacuate the coiintry 
(September, 1801). 

Peace of Amiens (March, 1802) . — Malta was also cap- 
tured by the English. But England was groaning under 
the weight of a debt of 12,000,000,000 francs, and with con- 
sternation saw the navy of France reviving under the 
powerful efforts of the First Consul. Bonaparte prepared 
at Boulogne an immense number of armed sloops for a 
descent upon England. Fear silenced for a time the resent- 
ment of the English aristocracy, and in March, 1802, the 
peace of Amiens Avas signed. All the continental acquisi- 
tions of France, all the republics established by her arms, 
were recognized. England restored the French colonies, 
gave Malta back to the Knights of St. John, and the Cape 
to the Dutch ; she kept for herself only the Spanish island 
of Trinidad, and Ceylon. 



586 THE CONSULATE. 

The news of the treaty of Amiens was receired in France 
and in England with unmixed joy. Peace seemed to be 
firmly established. The First Consul himself thought so, 
and declared his intention of devoting himself wholly to 
the administration of France. 

Glorious Administration of Bonaparte ; the Concordat 
(1801). — Bonaparte was now at the summit of glory. For 
the second time he had succeeded in bestowing upon France 
a glorious peace. Party spirit was appeased, and order 
reigned everywhere. In the interest of industry, he renewed 
the powerful impetus given by Colbert. The partition of 
the great domains which had been sold as national prop- 
erty had put small portions of land into a great many 
hands which had never before possessed any, and agricul- 
ture doubled its products. Commerce was encouraged, in 
spite of a high protective tariff; the finances were reorgan- 
ized, the Bank of France established, the budget, for the 
first time in a century, was balanced, roads and bridges 
repaired, the arsenals filled. The Civil Code was discussed 
in his presence, and he elaborated the project of a powerful 
organization of public instruction, the University, that of a 
great institution of national rewards, the Legion of Honor. 

A marvellous activity, an unparalleled capacity for work, 
made him see everything, comprehend everything, do every- 
thing. The arts and letters received from him the most 
earnest encouragement. A stranger to the resentinents of 
the past ten years, he recalled the Emigres ; he also recalled 
the priests, and signed with Pius VII. (July, 1801) the 
Concordat, by which he hoped to establish religious peace. 
By the provisions of this celebrated act, France was to be 
divided into ten archbishoprics and fifty bishoprics ; a salary 
paid by the State was substituted for the former landed 
endowments of the clergy. The government had the regu- 
lation of public worship, the nomination of the bishops and 
archbishops ; but to the Pope alone pertained the right of 
giving them canonical institution in their offices. 

Thus the First Consul endeavored to efface political 
resentments and to unite all parties in a common feeling 
for the greatness of France. Moreover, while chaining the 
Eevolution to his chariot, he nevertheless preserved its 
principles in his Code Civil. Unhappily, he showed more 
and more the temper of a master, and was every day more 
and more impatient of contradiction. He broke the oppo- 



THE CONSULATE. 587 

sition of tlie Corps L^gislatif and the Tribunate, by elimi- 
nating those members of either body who showed themselves 
opposed to his government. He showed himself equally 
despotic in judicial proceedings. Despising such ideologues 
as Si^y^s, he reserved favors and honors for those who were 
content to serve him well without discussion. But the 
despotism of the First Consul, his prompt decisions, his 
powerful initiative, were welcome to most, wounded few 
people, and men repeated with him that " France was saved 
from the slavery of anarchy," and congratulated her that 
she had found a superior genius to conduct her affairs. 
These sentiments of gratitude and confidence burst forth 
when the irreconcilables of the extreme parties attempted 
his assassination, especially in the case of the attempt made 
by the infernal machine. 

The Consulate for Life (August 2, 1802) . — Every one 
declared that France should prolong the administration of 
the pacifier of the continent whom these parties threatened. 
A short time after the peace of Amiens the people bestowed 
upon him the consulate for life, with the right of choosing 
a successor. The Constitution of the year VIII. was at the 
same time greatly altered. Popular rights were narrowed. 
The Senate obtained the right to regulate by senatus-con- 
sulta all that had not been already provided for by the 
organic laws, and to dissolve the Corps L^gislatif and the 
Tribunate. A privy council was instituted with important 
powers. The two other consuls remained insignificant. The 
organic senatus-consultum of the Constitution of the year X. 
was adopted by 3,577,259 votes out of 4,568,885. 

Foreign Policy of the First Consul (1802).— The Cisal- 
pines had already given the presidency of their government 
to Bonaparte; the Ligurian Republic asked him to choose 
its doge. The union of Piedmont to France, forming seven 
new departments, the occupation of the duchy of Parma and 
the island of Elba, were effected without opposition, but not 
without exciting bitter resentments. It was the inaugura- 
tion of a policy which was to prove fatal to France. Swit- 
zerland was a prey to deplorable agitations. Bonaparte, called 
upon to act as mediator, re-established material order, and 
gave her a constitution, the wisdom of which was admired by 
all Europe (February, 1803). The French alliance with the 
cantons was renewed, and sixteen thousand Swiss entered the 
service of France. His intervention in the affairs of Germany 



588 THE CONSULATE. 

was equally vigorous, but in the end unfortunate for France. 
German diplomacy was compelled to renounce its proverbi- 
ally slow processes in order to keep pace with the young 
conqueror. The indemnities promised the German princes 
who had lost their domains on the left of the Ehine were 
paid by secularizing the three ecclesiastical electorates. 
Certain imperial cities were also deprived of their ancient 
privileges and placed under the authority of a prince. The 
chaos of Germany was simplified, but a long step was taken 
toward the attainment of German national unity, the cause 
of all the misfortunes of France. 

Expedition to San Domingo. — The First Consul had re- 
solved to restore the navy and commerce of France ; he was 
thus naturally led to the idea of restoring also her colonial 
empire. He first made a prudent sacrifice, selling Louis- 
iana to the Americans for 60,000,000 francs. San Domingo 
had been lost to France. Excited by the events of 1789, 
the blacks had massacred the whites, and had lapsed into 
barbarism. The First Consul desired to recover the richest 
jewel of the old French colonial empire. He sent consider- 
able forces, under the command of General Leclerc, his 
brother-in-law, against the negro general, Toussaint Louver- 
ture. The capture of this remarkable man was the only 
successful event of the inopportune expedition, which deeply 
irritated England, and which was decimated by yellow fever. 
The successors of Toussaint drove the French from the island, 
and founded the republic of Hayti (1804). 

Rupture of the Peace of Amiens (1803). — England had 
made peace in order to put a stop to the aggrandizement of 
France, and France increased more during peace than in 
time of war. Her commerce and industry took an immense 
leap forward; her flag reappeared on all the seas. More- 
over, she intervened with authority in the affairs of neigh- 
boring countries. England took exception to each of these 
acts of foreign policy ; she made them a pretext for refusing 
to restore Malta, the key of the Mediterranean. Bonaparte 
demanded this restitution, a principal condition of the treaty. 
The English ministry replied by seizing, on the different 
seas, without declaration of war, twelve hundred French 
and Batavian ships (May, 1803). Thus hostilities recom- 
menced. A fatal rupture, which forced Bonaparte to aban- 
don peace for war, and which led him, and with him France, 
through so much glory into miseries so profound ! 




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THE CONSULATE. 589 

Conspiracies ; Death of the Duke of Enghien. — Bonaparte 
caused all Englishmen travelling in France to be arrested, 
forbade the admission of English merchandise into the 
French ports, garrisoned the maritime fortresses in the 
kingdom of Naples, and took possession of Hanover ; then 
he returned to the project of crossing the Straits of Dover, 
and conquering peace in London itself. England stirred up 
the whole continent to find enemies for France. She created 
trouble with Russia, Austria, and Sweden, sought to gain 
Prussia, and is said to have been a party to the conspiracy 
of Georges Cadoudal and Pichegru, in which Moreau was 
implicated. Pichegru strangled himself in prison ; Moreau 
was condemned to imprisonment for two years ; Cadoudal 
and nineteen others were condemned to death; two only 
were executed with him. Moreau's sentence was remitted; 
he exiled himself to the United States, and did not return 
till 1813. 

Another tragedy preceded this. The Duke of Enghien, 
the last of the Cond^s, was carried off from the castle of 
Ettenheim in the grand-duchy of Baden, conducted to Vin- 
ceunes, delivered over to a military commission, and the 
same night condemned and shot in the moat of the fortress. 
The duke denied that he had any knowledge of the designs 
of Georges, but the law touching ^migr^s who had borne 
arms against France was applied to his case (March, 1804). 
He was protected by the law of nations, for he had not been 
taken in act of war, nor upon French territory. His death 
was a miserable act of revenge, intended to send terror to 
the hearts of the Bourbons in London itself. But it had 
consequences greatly to be deplored. The violation of law 
in the end subtracts more strength than it at first appears 
to add. Prussia, ready to make an alliance with France, 
turned towards Eussia, and from that day the coalition, 
which had been twice broken up, was renewed. 



590 REIQN OF NAPOLEON I. 



CHAPTER LXIV. 

REIGN OF NAPOLEON I. TO THE PEACE OP TILSIT. 
(1804-1807 A,D.) 

Proclamation of the Empire (May 18, 1804). — The glo- 
rious soldier of Arcole and of Eivoli had become the first 
general of the Republic, then its First Consul for ten years, 
then First Consul for life. He desired that his power 
should be made hereditary. France was not disposed to 
haggle over one more title with him who had bestowed 
upon her such glory and security. The Tribunate moved 
that Bonaparte be appointed hereditary emperor. The 
Senate proclaimed him under the name of Napoleon I., and 
the people ratified, by 3,572,329 votes against 2569, the 
establishment of a new dynasty, which, born of the Eevolu- 
tion, should preserve its principles. 

Organic Senatus-Consultum of the Year XII. — A senatus- 
consultum modified the consular constitution. Heredity 
was established in favor of the descendants of Napoleon, 
in the male line, or of his adopted sons. If he had no 
descendants, natural or adopted, the crown was to x^ass to 
the descendants of Joseph, and failing this, to those of 
Louis, two brothers of the new Emperor. Absolute author- 
ity over the imperial family was bestowed upon the Emperor. 
His brothers and sisters became princes and princesses. 
The new throne was surrounded by a new aristocracy, richly 
endowed and bearing imposing titles. First there were the 
great dignitaries of the Empire, who were : the grand 
elector (Joseph Bonaparte), charged with formal duties; 
the arch-chancellor of the Empire (Cambac^r^s), with a 
general supervision of the judiciary; the arch-chancellor 
of State for diplomacy ; the arch-treasurer (Lebrun) ; the 
constable (Louis Bonaparte) ; and the high admiral. 

Below these six great dignitaries were, first, sixteen 
marshals of the Empire, of whom fourteen were immedi- 
ately appointed : Jourdan, Massena, Augereau, Brune, Ber- 
thier, Lannes, Key, Murat, Bessi^re, Moncey, Mortier, Soult, 



BEIGN OF NAPOLEON I. 591 

Davout, and Bernadotte. There were besides four honor- 
ary marshals, who, being senators, were not to be in active 
service : of these, Kellermann was one. The inspectors- 
general of artillery, of engineers, and of the navy, the 
colonels-general of the cuirassiers, hussars, chasseurs, and 
dragoons, close the list of the great military officials. That 
of the great civil officers comprised Cardinal Fesch, uncle of 
Napoleon, grand almoner ; Talleyrand, grand chamberlain ; 
Berthier, grand huntsman; Caulaincourt, grand equerry; 
Duroc, grand marshal of the palace. A grand master of 
ceremonies, the Count of S6gur, was charged with teaching 
the new court the customs of the old. The Senate, com- 
posed of eighty co-optative members, the six great digni- 
taries, the French princes, and citizens appointed by the 
Emperor, preserved the prerogatives which the Constitution 
of the year X. had bestowed upon it. The Corps L^gislatif 
voted upon the laws without discussing them. The Tribu- 
nate became useless and was suppressed in 1807. 

The new constitution was, in its external forms, still 
representative : in reality it was absolute : for it is not the 
wheel-work which gives force to a machine ; it is the power 
which the human will expends upon it. Now, in 1804, the 
will of France was with Napoleon : she abdicated in favor 
of an extraordinary genius, who, until then, had used his 
power only to render her service, and who could render still 
further service by defending the Revolution against the 
resentments of England and the old monarchies of the con- 
tinent. But the abdication was too complete. Napoleon, 
in the days of his prosperity, found no one to contradict him 
in the Senate, in the Corps L6gislatif, in the aristocracy with 
which he surrounded himself : would he find among them 
all any to support him in the days of his misfortune ? 

The Coronation (December 2, 1804) ; Legion of Honor. — 
Napoleon had resolved to astonish France and the world by 
an imposing ceremony. He obtained from the Pope what 
neither king nor emperor had hitherto done, — that he should 
himself come to Paris to crown the new Charlemagne (De- 
cember 2, 1804). Pius VII. anointed the Emperor; but 
when he was about to take up the crown and place it on 
the Emperor's head. Napoleon seized it and crowned himself, 
and afterwards the Empress. 

The creating of a new aristocracy was deferred for a time. 
But Napoleon had already instituted the Legion of Honor, 



592 REIGN OF NAPOLEON I. 

a system of national rewards, for the scholar, the industrial 
leader, and the soldier who should deserve well of his 
country by his work, his activity, and his courage. On the 
14th of July, 1804, the anniversary of the taking of the Bas- 
tile, ISTapoleon distributed the grand decorations of the 
order to the principal personages of his Empire, On the 
16th of August he distributed the cross of the Legion of 
Honor among the soldiers of the camp of Boulogne. This 
was a great military festival, such as the world had never 
before seen. A hundred thousand men, the heroes of twenty 
battles, ranged themselves at the foot of the imperial throne, 
which was erected upon a natural elevation which sloped 
gradually to the seashore. Thence could be seen the ocean, 
the English fleet barring the Channel, and, in the distance, 
veiled by the fog, that England upon which all were panting 
to descend, and to which a fair wind and six hours of good 
fortune would conduct them. 

Napoleon King of Italy. — The Italian Eepublic, consti- 
tuted upon the model of the French Eepublic, underwent the 
very same vicissitudes. Italy, left to herself, was not able 
either to defend herself or to become united. Each great 
city insisting upon having its own independent life, the 
result was that there was no common or national life. That 
unity w^hich Italy now enjoys was prepared for her under 
the friendly and intelligent tutelage of Erance. Many 
Italians comprehended this, and when the Empire was 
proclaimed at Paris, royalty was also proclaimed at Milan 
(March, 1805). Napoleon offered the crown of Italy to his 
brother Joseph, who refused it. He then took it himself. 
Eugene Beauharnais, the son of the Empress Josephine, was 
sent to Milan as viceroy. 

Thus Napoleon was Emperor and king of Italy : as medi- 
ator of the Helvetian Confederation, he had the Swiss 
already xmder his influence, and Swiss regiments in his 
army. Austerlitz was to make him protector of the Con- 
federation of the Rhine. He would then have very nearly 
reconstructed the empire of Charlemagne^ a greatness which 
brought about his ruin and nearly caused the ruin of Erance. 

The Camp of Boulogne. — The continent kept silence in 
the face of the revolution which had just placed two crowns 
on the head of a soldier. England alone braved his anger, 
behind her Channel ; but Napoleon, having no other enemy, 
was able to apply all the immense resources of his genius 



REIGN OF NAPOLEON I. 593 

to the project of th.e invasion of England. Gunboats and 
transports had been constructed in eyery available place, 
equipped, armed, and brought to the Straits of Dover. 
Twelve or thirteen hundred of them were to be concentrated 
at Boulogne and in the neighboring ports ; one hundred and 
fifty thousand men were stationed in the vicinity. Numer- 
ous batteries of the heaviest ordnance protected them. From 
the beginning of the winter of 1803 the preparations were 
sufficiently advanced, the sailors and soldiers sufficiently 
drilled, for Napoleon to be able to fix upon a time for the 
descent ; but the conspiracy of Cadoudal interposed a brief 
delay. 

There were many ways of crossing the Strait, of which 
the best was through a combination which should bring into 
the Channel, were it only for a few hours, a superior French 
fleet. Napoleon, with great secrecy and marvellous skill, 
planned such a combination. Admiral Villeneuve, leaving 
Toulon with all the forces of that port, was to combine with 
his own fleet, as he passed along, the Spanish squadron at 
Cadiz, to sail to the Antilles and draw Nelson thither ; then 
suddenly turning towards Europe, and, combining with his 
own the squadron of Ferrol and that of Brest, to enter the 
Channel with a fleet of fifty vessels, which would remain 
master of the Strait long enough to enable the flotilla to 
cross with one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, and 
change the destinies of the world. 

At first all succeeded as had been hoped ; Nelson was de- 
ceived. Villeneuve returned to Europe; but he allowed 
himself to be stopped off Cape Finist^re by a battle with an 
English admiral, and then returned to repair his damages at 
Cadiz, where he was soon blockaded. At the moment of 
the failure of this magnificent plan Napoleon learned that 
English gold had formed a new coalition. Raging with dis- 
appointment, he commenced the immortal campaign of 
1805. • 

Campaign of 1805; Capitulation of Ulm. — Four attacks 
upon the Empire had been prepared : the Swedes and Rus- 
sians were to advance by way of Hanover ; the Russians 
and Austrians by the valley of the Danube ; the Austrians 
alone through Lombardy ; the Russians, the English, and 
the Neapolitans through Southern Italy. Of these four 
armies, Napoleon neglected two ; he neutralized a third by 
charging Mass6na to stop the Archduke Charles on the 



594 REIGN OF NAPOLEON I. 

Adage, and reserved all his blows for the fourth, an army 
of eighty thousand men, whom General Mack was conduct- 
ing through Bavaria and Swabia, towards the defiles of the 
Black Eorest and the banks of the Ehine, through which he 
expected that the French would pass. But Napoleon turned 
the Black Forest, and, repeating the marvel of Marengo, fell 
upon Mack's rear, cut him off from Vienna, surrounded him 
and besieged him in Ulm. The great army had entered 
Germany on September 2b', on the 19th of October the 
Austrians capitulated. In three weeks an army of eighty 
thousand men had disappeared. Fifty thousand had been 
taken or killed ; two hundred cannons, eighty flags, cap- 
tured. And these magnificent results had been achieved 
simply by combinations inspired by genius, and almost 
without loss. 

Trafalgar (October 21). — At this point the news of 
a great maritime defeat arrived to dismay the Emperor. 
Admiral Villeneuve, fighting against Nelson, lost the bloody 
battle of Trafalgar, which cost the combined fleet of France 
and Spain eighteen ships and seven thousand men. The 
English lost three thousand killed, of whom Nelson alone 
was more to be regretted than a whole army. This defeat 
was the irrevocable condemnation of the imperial navy, and 
Napoleon, despairing of fighting hand to hand with England, 
resolved more firmly to ruin his inaccessible enemy by clos- 
ing the continent against him. 

Battle of Austerlitz (December 2, 1805). — Meantime 
Napoleon hastened his march upon Vienna, now exposed. 
He entered it on November 13, and found himself still 
between two armies ; that of the Tyrol and Italy, driven 
back by Ney and Mass^na, and the great Russian and Aus- 
trian army, with the two emperors, which occupied Moravia. 
He hastened to meet the latter, crossed the Danube with 
sixty-five thousand men, and found ninety thousand Eus- 
sians and Austrians drawn up on the heights of Austerlitz. 
Their commanders had conceived a magnificent plan, — to 
turn the right wing of the French, to cut them off from 
Vienna and their reserves, and afterwards crush them. But 
Napoleon, penetrating their designs, allured them into an 
attack on his right wing, and then, when they were thus fully 
engaged at one side, and, masters of the villages, believed 
that they had decided the fate of the day, threw twenty- 
five thousand men forward, upon a plateau in the centre, 



REIGN OF NAPOLEON I. 595 

which was the key of the whole position, destroying the 
Russian imperial guard which was defending it, cut the 
enemy's army in two, and turning upon the three divisions 
sent to turn the French right, cut them to pieces with grape- 
shot, drove them upon the ice of the ponds which sur- 
rounded the plain, and broke the ice with cannon-balls 
under the feet of thousands of Russians, who were thus 
swallowed up and perished. Lannes, at the same time, on 
the left, had completely repulsed the enemy's cavalry and 
thrown it into confusion. The enemy lost fifteen thousand 
killed, ten thousand prisoners, two hundred and eighty can- 
nons. The two emperors fled; the emperor of Austria 
asked an interview with Nax^oleon at the outposts; an 
armistice was agreed upon. Prussia, which had been on the 
point of aiding the emperors, now, alarmed, hastened to 
deny her intentions and treated with Napoleon. In order 
to estrange her permanently from England, he offered her 
Hanover, in exchange for Cleves, Wesel, and'Neuchdtel. 

Treaty of Pressburg ; Confederation of the Rhine. — Aus- 
tria concluded peace, December 26, at Pressburg. She 
gave up the Venetian States, Istria, and Dalmatia, which 
Napoleon united to the kingdom of Italy, the Tyrol and 
Austrian Swabia, which he gave to the duke's of Bavaria 
and Wiirttemberg, who took the title of King ; Austria lost 
4,000,000 subjects out of 24,000,000, all control over Italy, 
and aU influence over Switzerland. The treaty of Press- 
burg gave France the most magnificent position. Prussia 
had withdrawn from the Rhine ; Austria had been driven 
out of Italy. The old German Empire, created by Charle- 
magne, was dissolved after ten centuries of existence. 
Francis II. abdicated the title of Emperor of Germany, and 
took that of Emperor of Austria. Many of the little Ger- 
man states were suppressed. The most powerful princes 
of Western and Central Germany united, under the pro- 
tection of France, in a new federal state called the Confed- 
eration of the Rhine. It was a benefit to Germany and to 
Eui'ope to establish, between three great military states, 
this Confederation which prevented their frontiers from 
touching. 

The Vassals of Napoleon; New Nobility. — But already 
Napoleon had thoughts of still wider aggrandizement. He 
drove the Bourbons from Naples, and completed the system 
of the Empire by surrounding it with vassal monarchies and 



596 REIGN OF NAPOLEON I. 

feudal principalities. Joseph Bonaparte was ma.de king .of 
Naples and Sicily ; Louis, king of Holland ; Eliza, sister of 
Napoleon, became Ducliess of Lucca ; tlie beautiful Pauline 
Borghese, another of his sisters, was made Duchess of Guas- 
talla; Murat, the husband of Caroline Bonaparte, Grand- 
duke of Berg ; Berthier, Prince of Neuch^tel ; Talleyrand, 
of Benevento; Bernadotte, the brother-in-law of Joseph, of 
Ponte-Corvo. He reserved for himself in the various Italian 
states nineteen duchies, and distributed them among his 
companions in arms and his most devoted followers. In 
these duchies, all constituted outside of Prance so as not 
to wound the national feeling of equality, a portion of the 
public revenue was bestowed upon the titular duke, but 
without any political power. Finally, in order to have 
rewards for all ranks, he retained large portions of the 
national property in the different states of Italy, and later 
in Poland, Hanover, and Westphalia. He thus had means 
with which to distribute rich donations among his generals, 
ministers, and soldiers. Every general or colonel had some- 
thing to look forward to. A new nobility, of an entirely 
plebeian origin, but which had found its patents of nobility 
on the field of battle, was formed around the crowned sol- 
dier. This was a deviation from the principle of equality ; 
but Napoleon granted to this new nobility no privilege, no 
advantage over other citizens save its titles and its honors. 
Prussian Campaign (1806). — The battle of Austerlitz 
had killed William Pitt, and Fox had succeeded him as 
minister. Napoleon, on learning of this, hoped to bring 
England to terms of peace. Unhappily, Pox died, and the 
power again fell into the hands of the partisans of uncom- 
promising war. Meanwhile rumors of a restitution to Eng- 
land of Hanover, which Napoleon had recently promised to 
Prussia, threw the court of Berlin into a state of anxiety 
which led to the most senseless resolutions. Napoleon 
really desired the alliance of Prussia, but the Prussian 
court inspired him with neither esteem nor confidence. 
The Emperor had thoroughly penetrated its hostile designs 
at the time of Austerlitz. Later, Prussia, thinking that 
peace with England would be made only at her expense, 
rushed heedlessly into the most extreme peril. At Berlin 
the Austrian army was spoken of only with scorn ; it was 
said that the Prussian army was still made up of the soldiers 
of Kossbach, and that the victories which Napoleon .had won 



REIGN OF NAPOLEON L 597 

over incapable generals would come to an end when he had 
to confront the old Duke of Brunswick, the pupil of the 
great Frederick. The beautiful and romantic Queen Louise 
fostered the delusion. A new coalition was formed. Prussia 
promised two armies which were a three-month's march 
distant, England promised supplies, Sweden her feeble sup- 
port. Napoleon set out from Paris on September 26. The 
grand army, one hundred and thirty thousand incomparable 
soldiers, was still cantoned in Germany. In a few days 
he concentrated it at Bamberg, and on the 8th of October 
it was in motion. Two Prussian armies had crossed the 
Elbe and were manoeuvring behind the Thuringian forest. 
Napoleon again repeated the manoeuvre of Marengo and 
Ulm ; he turned their left flank and placed himself between 
their armies and the Elbe, which was their line of retreat. 

Jena and Auerstadt (October 14, 1806). — Already the 
greatest confusion reigned in the Prussian army. The 
remembrance of the capitulation of Ulm excited much anx- 
iety. The old Duke of Brunswick was dismayed at the 
idea of ending his military career as Mack had done. 
When Napoleon threatened to cross the Saale, the duke 
resolved to retreat toward Magdeburg and the lower Elbe, 
but it was too late ; none ever escaped, who came so near 
Napoleon. Prince Hohenlohe, surprised at Jena, lost in a 
few hours twelve thousand killed and wounded, fifteen thou- 
sand prisoners, and twelve hundred pieces of cannon. 

While Napoleon was gaining this overwhelming victory, 
a memorable battle was fought, four miles off, at Auerstadt, 
by Marshal Davout. With twenty-six thousand men, Davout 
was guarding the Saale, under orders to hold this post to 
the last extremity, when the Duke of Brunswick arrived 
with sixty thousand Prussians, to cross. Davout refused to 
retreat. Fifteen thousand Prussian cavalry, reputed to 
be the best in Europe, twenty times charged the French 
squares, but not one was broken : then the squares, in their 
turn deploying in columns of attack, broke through the 
enemy's infantry, threw them into disorder, and forced 
them to retreat. The Duke of Brunswick was mortally 
wounded ; ten thousand men were killed and wounded ; one 
hundred and fifteen pieces of cannon were left in the hands 
of Davout, who had himself only forty-four pieces. 

The two Prussian armies fled in terrible disorder. The 
French corps, particularly Murat's cavalry, dashed forward 



598 REIGN OF NAPOLEON I. 

in pursuit, crossed the Elbe, and hastened to the Oder, in 
order to arrive there before the Prussians. Prince Hohen- 
lohe was forced to surrender at Prenzlau, Bliicher at Liibeck. 
Of the one hundred and sixty thousand men who went into 
the campaign, twenty-five thousand were either killed or 
wounded, one hundred thousand taken prisoners, and thirty- 
five thousand scattered ; not a man of them recrossed the 
Oder. All the fortresses on the Elbe and the Oder were 
occupied by the French. In a month (October 8-Novem- 
ber 8) the Prussian monarchy had ceased to exist. Napo- 
leon entered Potsdam and Berlin. 

The Continental Blockade (1806). — Austerlitz had put 
Napoleon in possession of the whole of Italy and the Adri- 
atic ; that is, of half of the European coast of the Mediter- 
ranean; alliance with Spain and Turkey gave him the rest. 
Jena assured him of the coasts of the North Sea and a part 
of those of the Baltic ; by advancing one step more he could 
close the whole continent against English commerce, and 
thus reduce to terms the inaccessible insular power. He 
resolved to march from the Oder to the Vistula, and occupy 
the mouths of all the great European rivers. And as Eng- 
land had proclaimed the blockade of all the coast from 
Brest to Hamburg, interdicting the approach of neutral 
ships, he issued, on the 21st of November, the famous Berlin 
Decree, which declared the British Isles themselves in a 
state of blockade. Consequently all commerce with the 
isles was interdicted, and English merchandise, wherever 
found, was confiscated. In this battle of the giants the in- 
terests of the smaller states disappeared, and the law of 
nations was trodden under foot by both parties. But in 
order that this system should succeed, it was necessary 
that not one port of the continent should remain open. 
After having closed those of Prussia it was necessary to 
close those of Eussia also ; that is, to make one's self master 
everywhere. The continental blockade was a gigantic en- 
gine of warfare which would surely bring death to one of 
the two adversaries : it in fact killed Napoleon. 

Eylau (February 3, 1807). — On the 28th of November 
Murat entered Warsaw ; Napoleon arrived there in Decem- 
ber, but did not, as he had had some intention of doing, 
re-establish the kingdom of Poland. Already one hundred 
and twenty thousand Eussians were on the Narew, an east- 
ern branch of the Vistula. Napoleon attacked them in a 



REIQN OF NAPOLEON I. 599 

series of engagements, which cost them twenty thousand 
men and eighty pieces of cannon. But from the nature of 
the country he could not follow up his advantages. He 
was obliged to halt and go into winter quarters, admirably 
arranged in front of the Vistula. The Eussian generalis- 
simo, Bennigsen, deceived by the Emperor's arrangements, 
attempted to surprise the French cantonments. But ISTey 
arrested his advance, and, as he retreated, followed him and 
obliged him to halt at Eylau and fight a great battle. The 
Russians had seventy-two thousand men engaged, the Em- 
peror had only fifty-four thousand, worn out by fatigue and 
suffering from hunger. It was the 8th of February ; a thick 
snow covered the ground, gusts of wind and whirls of snow 
drove into the faces of the soldiers. The battle began with 
a terrible cannonade. Then Augereau's corps attacked the 
enemy's centre. But the Russians unmasked a battery of 
seventy-two pieces which in a few moments cut down four 
thousand Frenchmen. This corps fell back upon Eylau; 
the enemy followed, but was finally driven back by Murat's 
cavalry and the imperial guard, after a desperate struggle. 
Meanwhile Davout and Ney were coming up on the wings ; 
Bennigsen, reduced to forty thousand men, determined to 
retreat. He had lost thirty thousand men, killed, severely 
wounded, or captured; the French, ten thousand. This 
frightful butchery was not such a victory as Napoleon was 
in the habit of gaining ; it was considered almost a defeat. 

Friedland (June 14, 1807). — The grand army then re- 
turned to its cantonments. Danzig was forced to capitulate 
in May, and Silesia was conquered. The summer campaign 
was short and decisive. The army left its cantonments on 
the 1st of June. On the 5th, the Eussian generalissimo 
attacked the extreme right under Ney, but was out-gen- 
eralled by Napoleon, driven backward and overtaken at 
Friedland on the road to Konigsberg, which he was trying 
to cover. Lannes, with twenty-six thousand men against 
eighty-two thousand, held him in check until the Emperor 
arrived with the rest of the army. It was the anniversary 
of Marengo. The Emperor, appearing to give battle all 
along the line, but in reality only fighting on the right, 
threw Ney upon Friedland, which he captured after a bril- 
liant engagement. Then the centre and left wing engaged, 
forced the Eussians to fall back upon the river AUe, and 
drove them into it. Eighty cannons were left in the hands 



600 REIGN OF NAPOLEON I. 

of tlie Frencli, twenty-five thousand Eussians were killed, 
wounded, or drowned ; the rest fled in the greatest disorder. 
Konigsberg, the last city left to the king of Prussia, sur- 
rendered; immense quantities of provisions were found 
there, and one hundred thousand muskets sent by England. 

Peace of Tilsit (July 8, 1807). — Disgusted with a war 
in which Austria, Prussia, and Russia lost their provinces, 
their arms, and their honor, while England alone gained, 
the emperor Alexander consented to hold an interview with 
Napoleon upon a raft anchored in the ISTiemen at Tilsit. 
After long and intimate, conferences between the two sover- 
eigns, the treaty of Tilsit was signed on July 8, 1807. 
The Emperor restored to the king of Prussia, Pomerania, 
Brandenburg, old Prussia, and Silesia, with the exception 
of Danzig, which was declared a free city, and Magdeburg, 
which was left in the hands of the French. Of Hesse-Cassel 
and the Prussian possessions west of the Elbe, he formed 
the kingdom of Westphalia for his brother Jerome ; of the 
Polish provinces of Prussia, he formed the grand-duchy of 
Warsaw, which he gave to the king of Saxony. The two 
new states entered into the Confederation of the Rhine. 

These were only half-way measures. Prussia was either 
too much weakened, or not sufficiently so. She could no 
longer be a useful ally for France. She remained at heart 
an implacable enemy. Saxony, united to the grand-duchy 
of Warsaw, would not form a state capable of maintaining 
its existence. The new kingdom of Westphalia was bet- 
ter planned, but would have little importance. Ruins can 
never be used as props, and from the Rhine to the Nienien 
Napoleon strewed only the ruins of states. The statesman 
was not the equal of the general. The intoxication of suc- 
cess was beginning to dazzle this strong mind. Austria and 
Prussia had refused him their alliance, and he had overcome 
them ; he tried to gain the alliance of Russia, by offering to 
divide the world with Alexander. He abandoned Finland 
to him, and suggested a hope of his being permitted to ac- 
quire the Danubian provinces of Turkey. In return he 
obtained the Bocche di Cattaro and the Ionian Isles ; he 
received the promise of a rigorous application of the conti- 
nental blockade on the part of Prussia and Russia, and 
carte blanche for all changes that he might choose to make 
in the West. Thus the year 1807 marked the apogee of 
the greatness of Napoleon. 



REIGN OF NAPOLEON I. 601 

The Code Civil; the University. — On his return from 
Marengo, the First Consul had charged a commission of 
four jurisconsults to prepare a draft of a code, for which 
the preceding assemblies had prepared the material. This 
great work was finished in four months. After revision by 
all the judicial courts, by the section of legislation in the 
Council of State, and by the Tribunate, it came back to the 
Council, where, under the presidency of the First Consul, it 
was subjected to rigid scrutiny. He animated all by his 
enthusiasm ; he astonished the old jurisconsults by the pro- 
fundity of his views, and especially by his perfect good 
sense, which for making good laws is worth more than all 
the science of the legists. Thus was elaborated that codifi- 
cation of the law of the family and of property which the 
Corps L^gislatif adopted in its session of 1804, and which 
deservedly received, three years later, the name of Code 
Napoleon. This Code was completed successively, by the 
adoption, in 1806, of the Code of Civil Procedure ; in 1807, 
of the Code of Commerce ; in 1810, of the Code of Criminal 
Procedure and of the Penal Code. 

Napoleon also endeavored to introduce order and State 
control into education. He created twenty-nine lyc^es, in 
which the instruction should be at once literary, scientific, 
and moral. Sixty-four hundred scholarships, representing an 
annual expenditure of 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 fr., were pro- 
vided. The private schools were compelled besides to send 
their pupils to the lectures at these lyc^es. Thus the State 
resumed the direction of secondary instruction. For primary 
instruction, unfortunately, little was done. For higher and 
special instruction, Napoleon created ten schools of law and 
six of medicine. The ilScole Polytechnique was already in 
existence ; the First Consul added the iScole des Fonts et 
Chauss^es for the education of engineers, and that of Fon- 
tainebleau for the training of ofiicers. In 1804 he organized 
the University of France. 

Puhlie "Works. — At the same time a strict and skilful 
management of the public finances enabled him to under- 
take immense public works in all parts of the country. 
Water was supplied to quarters of Paris where there had 
been none. The canal from Nantes to Brest and that from 
the Ehine to the Rhone were dug. At Cherbourg he threw 
a mountain in the sea, in order to have a spacious and safe 
harbor in the Channel. At Antwerp, he constructed quays, 



602 REIGN OF NAPOLEON I. 

an arsenal, and basins which could hold a whole fleet of war. 
He cut roads through La Vendee, which opened it to com- 
merce and modern ideas. The fine roads of the Simplon, 
Mont Cenis, and Mt. Gen^vre, and that from Metz to Mainz 
were finished. Imposing and useful monuments decorated 
the great cities : at Paris, the Madeleine, the colossal Arc 
de I'i^toile, the graceful Arc de Triomphe in the Carrousel, 
the column of the Place Venddme ; and other constructions 
at Lyons, Bordeaux, and Milan. He finished the Pantheon, 
or Sainte-Genevi^ve, the palace of the Corps L6gislatif, 
and the Louvre ; he repaired St. Denis, projected the Bourse, 
constructed the abattoirs, the granary, etc. 

Industry and Commerce. — Industry received the most 
active encouragements : he promised magnificent rewards to 
inventors ; he offered a million to him who would invent a 
machine for spinning flax. He promised another to the 
scientist who should make it possible to substitute beet 
roots for cane in the manufacture of sugar ; he pensioned 
Jacquart, the inventor of the Jacquart loom for silk weav- 
ing ; he with his own hand decorated Richard Lenoir for 
his cotton-spinning machines; he established a school of 
arts and trades at Compi^gne. There had only been 310 ex- 
hibitors at the exposition of 1798 ; there were 1422 in 1806. 
Commerce by sea was reduced to nothing ; but the inland 
trade of France was immense. The unrivalled silk manu- 
factures of France, and other manufactures, now that Eng- 
lish competition was restricted, found markets over the 
whole continent. 

Letters and Arts. — The glory of letters was not wanting 
during this reign ; but the principal writers were in the op- 
position : Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, Cabanis, Maine 
de Biran, Ch^nier, Ducis, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and 
de Maistre. 

The arts were in a state of brilliant development. David, 
in order to rescue them from the enervating insipidity of 
the eighteenth century, had led the French school back 
to the fruitful study of antiquity. If his pupils, by exag- 
gerating the defects of their master, painted as though they 
were sculpturing, and gave their figures and their draperies 
the stiffness of military costumes, a few of them, Gros at 
their head, began a reaction against that cold and academic 
style, by adding the study of nature to that of rules. The 
sciences, with Laplace, Lagrange, Monge, Haiiy, Cuvier, 



REIGN OF NAPOLEON- I. 603 

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Gay-Lussac, made a marvellous 
advance. Napoleon, who retained upon the throne the 
title of member of the Institute, treated the savants better 
than Louis XIV. treated the poets. He was on terms of 
real friendship with some of them. 



604 THE EMPIRE. 



CHAPTER LXV. 

THE EMPIRE, PROM 1807 TO 1812. 

Feudatory Kingdoms. — It has already been seen that the 
Emperor tried to obtain external support by surrounding the 
Empire with feudatory kingdoms. The kingdom of Naples, 
under Joseph, and that of Italy, under Eugene de Beau- 
harnais as viceroy, the Helvetian Confederation, of which 
Napoleon was mediator, the Confederation of the Ehine, of 
which he was protector, the kingdom of Holland, under 
Louis Bonaparte, and that of Westphalia, under Jerome, 
covered the whole frontier of his Empire on the northeast, 
east, and southeast. To the south Napoleon had nothing 
upon which he could depend. A degenerate branch of the 
house of Bourbon reigned at Madrid under the protection 
of a favorite, Godoy, who pursued a double policy toward 
France. Napoleon, on his return from Tilsit, determined 
by some means or other to bind the peninsula to his policy. 

Conquest of Portugal (November, 1807) ; Naval Arma- 
ments. — He resolved first to drive the English out of Por- 
tugal, and offered to divide that kingdom with the court of 
Madrid. An army, commanded by Junot, crossed Spain 
and entered Lisbon without striking a blow. At the same 
time the Eussians conquered Finland, and England bom- 
barded Copenhagen for the purpose of capturing the Danish 
fleet and destroying the Danish arsenal. This odious act 
caused Denmark to join in the continental blockade, as did 
Austria also; Portugal had already joined it. From the 
extremity of the Baltic to the Straits of Gibraltar all the 
ports of the continent were closed against the English. At 
the same time, in all the ports, immense marine armaments 
were being prepared ; the flotilla of Boulogne was reorgan- 
ized. This time the whole continent sided with France. 
England was saved only by a mistake of Napoleon, — his 
intervention in Spain. 

Rupture with the Pope (April, 1808). — Contentions be- 
gan with Pius VII. on the subject of the continental block- 



P 3 -t ^ i 




V 








THE EMPIRE. 605 

ade. The Pope tried to escape from the measures imposed 
upon all the states of the continent, refused to recognize 
Joseph as king of Naples, and constantly opposed the 
policy of France in Italy. Finally, Napoleon occupied 
Eome in April, 1808. Later he abolished the temporal 
dominion of the Pope, organized Eome and the surrounding 
country into two French departments, and held the pontiff 
in an honorable captivity at Savona. But he was only weak- 
ened by these measures, for a formidable opposition was at 
once organized against him among the clergy and the French 
Catholics. The great services he had rendered the Church 
were forgotten ; the author of the Concordat was looked upon 
only in the light of a persecutor of the sovereign pontiff. 

Invasion of Spain (1808). — The intervention of the Em- 
peror in Spain had still graver consequences. The court 
of Madrid was greatly divided. Godoy ruled the king and 
queen, but was odious to the Prince of the Asturias and to 
the whole nation. An illness of Charles IV. determined the 
queen and Godoy to seek for an opportunity to deprive the 
heir presumptive of the throne ; the latter defended himself 
by counter-plots. Both parties invoked the aid of Napoleon. 
His first plan was to persuade them to fly to Spanish Amer- 
ica, as the house of Braganza had fled to Brazil. But at 
this point a revolt forced Charles IV. to abdicate in favor 
of his son, Ferdinand VII. Murat was already with an army 
near Madrid ; he entered the city and persuaded the old 
king to go and have an interview with Napoleon at Bayonne. 
Ferdinand also went thither. Completely in the power of 
Napoleon, they were intimidated or seduced into abdicating 
in favor of the Emperor. Joseph Bonaparte gave up his 
crown of Naples to Murat and was made king of Spain, and 
a new constitution for the kingdom was promulgated. 

In all this affair Napoleon had played a part which was 
advantageous neither to his character, his power, nor his 
glory. He desired to cause it to be forgotten by reason of 
the great services which he hoped to render to Spain by 
regenerating her. But while official Spain hastened into 
the presence of the new king, the people rebelled. The 
insurrection burst forth everywhere at once, with patriotic 
fury. Eeligious passion united with political passion to 
stir up the fire. The monks preached the war as a crusade. 
The movement soon became formidable ; all the provinces 
rose in revolt. French couriers, and even the sick and 



606 THE EMPIRE. 

wounded, were slain. Joseph with difficulty reached Madrid. 
At Saragossa and Valencia the French troops were repulsed, 
and in Andalusia Dupont was surrounded at Baylen and 
forced to capitulate (July 20th) . 

This was the first reverse which ISTapoleon had sustained. 
The English immediately hastened to appear, and General 
Wellesley gained over Junot the battle of Vimeiro, which 
lost Portugal to the French. By September, 1808, they 
possessed in the whole peninsula only the provinces north 
of the Ebro. After an interview with Alexander at Erfurt, 
at which, by giving Eussia Moldavia and Wallachia, he 
apparently secured the tranquillity of Central Europe, 
Napoleon was free to hasten to Spain. He already had 
one hundred thousand men there ; he took from the grand 
army one hundred and fifty thousand of his valiant soldiers, 
and with them crossed the mountains. Nothing could with- 
stand him ; the enemy's centre was broken up, and the army 
entered Madrid, where Napoleon decreed the suppression of 
the Inquisition, of two-thirds of ,the convents, of feudal 
rights, and of internal custom-houses. On the left wing. 
Saint Cyr carried on a brilliant campaign in Catalonia. On 
the right, Soult drove thirty thousand English as far as Co- 
ruiia, and compelled them to take refuge on board their ships. 

Abensberg and Eckmiihl (April, 1809). — But Napoleon 
was now called elsewhere, and the danger of this new enter- 
prise became apparent. Austria, seeing him occupied in a 
terrible war in the Iberian peninsula, thought that the mo- 
ment had come to avenge her disasters. England offered 
her 100,000,000 f r. ; the Czar Alexander's enthusiasm for 
Napoleon seemed to grow cold ; Germany, heavily taxed and 
stirred up by secret societies, loecame hostile, and the grand 
army, diminished by one hundred and fifty thousand men, 
was scattered from Hamburg to Naples, A bold offensive 
promised success, and success promised a general revolt. 
One hundred and seventy-five thousand Austrians, under 
the Archduke Charles, advanced slowly upon Bavaria. Napo- 
leon, warned in forty-eight hours by means of the sema- 
phore, left Paris on the 13th of April, and arrived on the 
17th upon the scene of action. Already the archduke was 
manoeuvring to throw his forces into the open space be- 
tween Massena and Davout. Napoleon promptly seized the 
central position himself, and summoned the two marshals to 
join him at once. Then, with his forces concentrated, he 



THE EMPIRE. 607 

charged the enemy's centre, cut it in two by the battle of 
Abensberg on the 20th, and by the capture of Landshut on 
the 21st ; on the following day he fell upon the right of the 
Austrians, overcame them at Eckmiihl, drove them back 
upon the Danube, and nearly captured their whole body. 
In five days of fighting Napoleon had taken sixty thousand 
men, one hundred pieces of cannon, cut the Austrian army 
in two, thrown the right wing into Bohemia, the left on the 
Inn, and conquered the route to Vienna. On the 10th of 
May, one month after the commencement of hostilities, he 
Avas before that capital, which, after a brief bombardment, 
opened its gates to him. 

Aspern, or Essling (May 21 and 22, 1809). — Austria had 
still two armies : that of Italy, under the Archduke John, 
which had, upon learning of the victories of Napoleon, fallen 
back into Hungary ; and that of the Archduke Charles, who 
found himself still at the head of one hundred thousand 
men in front of Vienna, but on the other side of the Danube. 
Napoleon turned against the latter. The passage of a great 
river in the face of a powerful army is a difficult operation. 
In this case the difficulties were increased by a sudden rise 
in the river, which carried away the French bridges when 
only a part of the army had crossed. For thirty hours the 
archduke made vain efforts to throw the French into the 
Danube : the gardens and houses of Aspern were captured 
and recaptured fourteen times. The archduke stopped first, 
and the French soldiers retired to the island of Lobau in the 
river. There were neither conquerors nor conquered. But 
more than forty thousand men, of whom twenty-seven thou- 
sand were Austrians, had been killed or wounded. Napo- 
leon's battles were becoming more and more sanguinary. 

Wagram (July 6, 1809). — The Emperor fortified him- 
self in the island of Lobau. There was danger that the 
Archduke John might rejoin the Archduke Charles, and that 
the two might then surround him. The whole of the Tyrol 
was in revolt ; the German nationality, which had been long 
trampled upon, began to arise. Only one reverse was nec- 
essary to cause an explosion. But Napoleon, on the 5th of 
July, crossed over successfully from the island of Lobau, 
with one hundred and fifty thousand men and five hundred 
and fifty pieces of cannon. At the break of day the French 
army found itself established on the enemy's left. The 
Austrians fell back upon the heights of Wagram. Next day 



608 THE EMPIRE. 

the archduke tried to turn the left wing of the French line, 
but was repulsed by Massena. After a tremendous cannon- 
ade upon the enemy's centre, Macdonald was hurled upon 
it, attacked it, and forced it to fall back. At the same time 
Davout and Oudinot, on the right, carried the heights of 
Wagram. The Archduke Charles sounded a retreat. He 
had lost twenty-four thousand killed and wounded, twelve 
thousand prisoners, and twenty pieces of cannon. The 
French had seven thousand killed and eleven thousand 
wounded. This was not an overwhelming victory like 
those of Ulm, Austerlitz, and Jena; but JSTapoleon had 
no longer the same troops. A great many young soldiers 
and many foreigners had lilled up the vacancies left in the 
grand army by the corps which had been sent into Spain, 
and with these inexperienced troops bold strokes would 
have involved too great risks. The Austrian army never- 
theless fled, conquered and unable to rally or hold its ground. 
An armistice was signed first, at Znai'm, on the 11th of July ; 
the treaty of Vienna, on the 14th of October. Austria lost, 
by this treaty, 3,400,000 souls, whom Napoleon and his allies 
divided among themselves, France acquiring in Illyria the 
largest share. 

Events in Spain; Flushing (1809). — Meanwhile the war 
had continued in Spain, spreading itself through all the 
provinces. There Avere three hundred thousand Frenchmen 
in Spain ; but Napoleon was not there : the jealousies of his 
marshals hindered all concert of action. The most cele- 
brated affair was the memorable and desperate defence of 
Saragossa. Ye^ little advantage was taken of this victory. 
An expedition of Soult into Portugal failed completely, 
Ney evacuated Galicia ; and though Wellesley was defeated 
at Talavera, the campaign was still a failure. 

The English seized upon Flushing in August, 1809, and 
threatened the great arsenal of Antwerp. The national 
guards of the neighboring departments threw themselves 
into the town; fever decimated the forty-five thousand 
Englishmen who had landed in the island of Walcheren. 
Flushing had to be abandoned, and the greatest maritime 
armament of the century resulted in utter failure. 

Effect of these Last Events. — Up to the treaty of Tilsit 
Napoleon had constantly advanced in glory and power. 
But a desire had then begun to be felt that the glorious 
flight of the imperial eagles should be arrested. The spoliar 



THE EMPIRE. 609 

tion of the Bourbons of Spain, the captivity of the Holy 
Father, caused the first disquietudes ; the war with Spain 
and that with Austria increased them. Beiiind the regular 
armies and old governments which France had hitherto 
fought the people now arose. In Spain insurrection had 
paralyzed the efforts of immense forces ; in Germany it had 
broken out in twenty different places ; and at Schonbrunn, 
in the midst of his army, Napoleon had narrowly escaped 
being assassinated by a member of the Tugendbund. The 
battle of Es sling caused alarm to many. These symptoms 
doubtless did not escape the penetrating eye of Napoleon. 
But, accustomed to success, he no longer took account of diffi- 
culties, and believed that nothing could withstand his power. 

Marriage of Ifapoleon with Maria Louisa (April 1, 1810). 
— The marriage of ISTapoleon with Josephine had been with- 
out issue. The Emperor earnestly desired to have an heir 
of his own blood. He therefore resolved to contract 
another marriage. The glorious parvenu of the Revolution, 
the elected chief of a great people, demanded entrance into 
the family of kings. He believed that he could bind Aus- 
tria to his cause by a marriage, and asked of the proud 
Hapsburgs the hand of one of their daughters, the Arch- 
duchess Maria Louisa. An unfortunate union ; for in 
France the new empress was never popular, while among 
her own people she was regarded as a victim sacrificed for 
the house of Austria. In the eyes of many persons the 
divorce of Napoleon from Josephine Beauharnais, the gra- 
cious and devoted companion of his earlier years, was a 
divorce from good fortune. 

Birth of the King- of Rome. — The year 1810 passed with- 
out any war except that with Spain. On the 20th of March, 
1811, a son was born to the Emperor, and was immediately 
proclaimed king of Eome. Many now believed that the 
powers would no longer oppose the Empire, since a descend- 
ant of the house of Hapsburg would be heir to it. It was 
said that Napoleon, having reached mature age and having 
to watch over the heritage of his son, would' now occupy 
himself with smoothing the way for him, and would govern 
as a father instead of governing by strokes of genius. But 
there was no lack of people who in the midst of this gran- 
deur saw the causes of ruin ferment and increase. Among 
them was Wellington (Wellesley). The year 1811, indeed, 
had not passed, before Napoleon began preparations for the 
rashest of his enterprises, — the expedition into Russia. 



610 THE EMPIRE. 



CHAPTER LXVL 

THE EMPIRE PROM 1812 TO 1814. 

Condition of Europe in 1810. — No other generation of 
men had ever seen what those men saw who lived from 1789 
to 1811 : new ideas profoundly moving the world ; miseries 
and unparalleled grandeur ; a nation of soldiers ; armies 
more successful than the Eoman legions ; war marked by 
incomparable combinations and results ; and finally, to apply 
these ideas, to direct these formidable forces, a man gifted 
with the most powerful genius that nature had ever formed. 
Moreover, within twenty years old Europe had been over- 
turned, even to its foundations. The dynasty of Bourbon, 
but lately seated upon four thrones, now retained only one, 
and that tottering and menaced, in Sicily ; that of Braganza 
was exiled to Brazil; that of Savoy banished to Sardinia; 
those of Orange, Hesse, Brunswick, and twenty others de- 
spoiled. The duchies of Parma, Modena,'and Tuscany; the 
republics of Venice, Genoa, and Holland ; the States of the 
Church, the German Empire, no longer existed. The mon- 
archy of Frederick the Great had been broken up ; only a 
fragment still existed; that of Maria Theresa, humiliated 
by twenty defeats, was cut off from Italy and the sea. New 
states had come into existence. There were kings of Italy 
and Holland, of Westphalia, Wtirttemberg, and Saxony ; a 
Confederation of the Rhine to balance Prussia and Austria ; 
a Swiss Confederation established on a better basis than the 
old ; a grand-duchy of Warsaw. 

In these new states social regeneration was carried on as 
well as political regeneration; Naples, Milan, Warsaw, Hol- 
land, Westphalia, and Bavaria had French constitutions, 
codes, and systems of administration. Sweden asked for a 
French king. Spain, even, adopted the principles of 1789 in 
her constitution of 1812. Austria granted her people local 
franchises, abolished serfdom, admitted civil equality, and 
no longer confined the rank of ofiicer to the nobility. Eng- 
land herself caught the moral contagion. 



THE EMPIRE. 611 

Thus the French Ke volution — that is to say, a new social 
order, founded upon justice, and not upon privilege — began 
" to make the tour of the world." But such changes could 
not take place without causing great convulsions. The 
IDOwers of the past, trodden under foot by the victorious 
Revolution, did not resign themselves to their defeat. So 
long as France seemed to conquer only to bestow upon the 
conquered countries juster laws and better administration, 
the people were on her side. But soon the struggle as- 
sumed such proportions that all was sacrificed, liberty as 
Avell as justice, to the one thought of victory. The English 
suppressed the freedom of the ocean ; Napoleon suppressed 
the independence of the continent, and by the continental 
blockade, by the interruption of commerce, by the depriva- 
tion of colonial commodities, he imposed upon the people 
of Europe sacrifices which were felt even in every cottage. 
In vain he lavished benefits uj)on them, releasing Germany 
from its anarchical divisions, and Italy from its municipal 
jealousies ; in vain did he endeavor to rouse Spain from the 
torpor in which she had for centuries been sunk : the peoples 
felt that national feelings and national interests had been 
trampled on. The present ills caused the germs of prosperity 
and greatness, which the conqueror had sown everywhere, to 
be despised. And if the peoples withdrcAV from him, the 
kings did not draw near. In the eyes of the old courts, 
Napoleon was always only a parvenu, and his empire only 
a plebeian empire. France was isolated in the midst of the 
nations ; Napoleon isolated in the midst of sovereigns. 

Condition of France. — France had now had enough of 
military glory and enough of conquests ; peace would have 
been welcome to her also : victorious though she was, she 
suffered cruelly from this ceaseless Avar, which was so inju- 
rious to industry and agriculture, which developed military 
instincts to the detriment of peaceful habits, and tended to 
introduce the ways of camps into civil society. Perfect 
order reigned. The Corps Legislatif and the Senate never 
interposed a protest, and the journals, strictly watched by 
the censors, had lost all political character. Yet in the 
midst of this profound stillness the people began to demand 
that the government should pay more attention to the rising- 
wave of public opinion. 

Ten years before, France had forgotten, or rather did not 
yet know, that political liberty was the safeguard of civil 



612 THE EMPIRE. 

liberty. But such, thouglits sprang up at this time in many 
minds. It was to save her national interests, endangered 
by too feeble a government, that France had apx^lauded the 
coup d'etat of the 18th Brumaire ; it was to save them a 
second time, to restore maritime commerce, to put an end 
to the mourning of families bereaved by the war, and to 
the fears of the citizens, who felt themselves no longer 
under the protection of the law, that an opposition, feeble 
at the time, but destined to increase in strength, was formed 
against this government which had made itself absolute. 
Even in Paris the crowd began to show less enthusiasm. 

Eupture between France and Enssia (1812). — At Tilsit 
Napoleon had believed that he would find in Eussia the 
ally he needed on the continent ; but Alexander, in the war 
of 1809, had not given him the promised aid, had greatly 
resented his Austrian marriage and the enlargement of the 
grand-duchy of Warsaw, and tried to obtain from France 
the declaration that the kingdom of Poland should never be 
re-established. The friendship of the two monarchs had 
been already greatly strained ; the extension given to the 
French Empire, and the measures taken for the more certain 
execution of the continental blockade, gave it the final 
blows. 

In reply to the Berlin Decree, England had threatened to 
confiscate all ships which should go to France or to any of 
the countries allied to France (January, 1807) ; Napoleon, 
in his turn, declared all ships subject to confiscation, which 
should enter port in England or in her colonies (Milan 
Decree, December, 1807), and ordered all English merchan- 
dise found in France or in the allied states to be burned. 
These decrees destroyed regular commerce, but could not 
crush the contraband trade, which was carried on upon 
a great scale, particularly on the coast extending from 
Antwerp to Hamburg. Holland thus became an emporium 
for England. King Louis Bonaparte, between his subjects, 
who desired one thing, and the Emperor, who desired 
another, soon found his position intolerable, and abdicated, 
July, 1810. Holland was immediately united to the Empire. 
The Scheldt, the Meuse, the Ehine, and the Ems were thus 
closed to the English contraband trade ; but the Weser and 
the Elbe remained open. In December a decree announced 
the annexation of the Hanseatic cities of Bremen, Hamburg, 
and Liibeck. At the same time the Duke of Oldenburg, the 



THE EMPIRE, 613 

Czar's uncle, was dispossessed. Thus France, having been 
extended along the whole coast of the ISTorth Sea, was now 
touching the Baltic, and presented the strange spectacle of 
an empire embracing at once the Tiber and the Elbe. But 
it was necessary to go still farther and close the ports of 
Danzig, Konigsberg, and St. Petersburg. 

Napoleon required that Alexander should confiscate all 
neutral ships in his ports, as suspected of having violated 
the Berlin and Milan Decrees. It amoimted to demanding 
the final ruin of Eussian commerce, at the moment when, 
by a system of licenses, Napoleon himself was authorizing 
certain exchanges between France and England. Moreover, 
to submit to such orders was to place Russia in a position 
of dependence. Besides, the French Empire was becoming 
territorially dangerous to Russia by its gradual approaches. 
Yet the Czar hesitated, appalled by such a contest : Berna- 
dotte, the new French crown-prince of Sweden, decided him ; 
and in April, 1812, Alexander demanded the evacuation of 
old Prussia, the duchy of Warsaw, and of Swedish Pom- 
erania, an equivalent for Oldenburg, and some relaxation of 
the measures taken against neutral commerce. 

But it was to the interest of Napoleon not to precipitate 
matters. England seemed about to succumb from inability 
to export her products. A rupture between her and America 
was imminent. Should France be patient, the victory would 
be hers, for victory would surely rest with whichever of the 
two rivals should longest endure this terrible state of things. 
Moreover, the war in Spain was not ended ; Mass^na, Soult, 
Ney, the most skilful of the French generals, were succumb- 
ing to Wellington and the universal insurrection. Napoleon, 
with an imprudence of which formerly he would not have 
been guilty, left behind him, unfinished, this contest which 
occupied his best soldiers, and rejoined the grand army. In 
his gigantic projects, Moscow was to be only a halting-place : 
he wished to resume, in colossal proportions, his expedition to 
the Indies, which had failed after Aboukir. The vanquished 
Czar was to furnish auxiliaries, and a French and Russian 
army should set out from Tiflis, gathering on its way the no- 
madic tribes of Western Asia, for an attack on British India. 

Turkey and Sweden, natural allies of France, had been 
alienated. Bernadotte mediated between the Porte and the 
Czar the peace of Bucharest (May, 1812). Russia, thus 
secured on her right and left, could employ all her forces in 



614 THE EMPIRE. 

the centre, toward whicli Napoleon was advancing. The 
French army numbered, with its auxiliaries, which com- 
prised a third of the forces, six hundred and forty thousand 
men, more than sixty thousand horses, and twelve hundred 
cannons. The Eussians were less numerous, but they were 
fighting in their own country for a national cause, and they 
were resolved to '^ make a Spanish war." 

Russian Campaign (1812). — The commander of the prin- 
cipal Russian army, Barclay de Tolly, proposed, resting on 
the Diina, to cover with one hundred and thirty thousand men 
the road to St. Petersburg; while Prince Bagration, taking up 
a position in front of the Dnieper, should cover that to Mos- 
cow. Napoleon propoL;ed to pass over the watershed between 
the sources of the two streams. He crossed the Niemen on 
the 24th of June, six days after the Congress at Washington 
had declared war against England, drove the Eussians before 
him, and entered Wilna, where he refused to re-establish 
the ancient kingdom of Poland. He halted at Wilna seven- 
teen days, desiring to make it the centre of his commis- 
sariat. Then he took the road to Moscow, driving back 
detachments of the enemy, and capturing Smolensk after a 
bloody battle. The Eussians then fell back continually, 
devastating the country, burning towns and villages, destroy- 
ing grain and fruit-trees. Napoleon had need of a great 
victory, but could not obtain it. Fortunately the Czar now 
replaced Barclay by the old Kutusof, who determined to give 
battle in order to* save Moscow. The action took place near 
Moskowa, at Borodino ; two hundred and seventy thousand 
men, resolved on both sides to conquer, rushed into desper- 
ate combat ; one thousand pieces of cannon exchanged their 
fire. The Eussians, after a furious struggle, finally yielded. 
In order to make the defeat a complete rout, it would have 
been necessary to charge with the guard, but Napoleon 
would not risk his reserve : the battle was gained, but the 
Eussian army was not destroyed. Nearly sixty thousand 
men had fallen in its ranks (September 7). The French 
also had lost severely ; ten thousand had been killed and 
twenty thousand wounded ; forty-seven generals had been 
wounded, two mortally. 

The French army entered Moscow; but almost all the 
population had evacuated the city, and the Eussian army 
had exhausted the resources of the public magazines. Fire 
did the rest. The flames, bursting forth from different 



THE EMPIRE. 615 

points, spread rapidly through a city built of wood. The 
conflagration lasted five days. Only the churches, the Krem- 
lin, and a fifth part of the houses were saved. Fifteen thou- 
sand wounded, left by the Russians in Moscow, perished in 
the flames. The French found another Spain under the 
Polar sky. Napoleon waited in vain for propositions from 
the Czar; his own were scornfully rejected. Meanwhile 
the Russians were reorganizing their armies, and winter set 
in. On the 13th of October, the first frost gave warning 
that it was time to think of the retreat, which the enemy, 
already on the French flank, was threatening to cut off. 

Leaving Mortier with ten thousand men in the Kremlin, 
the army quitted Moscow on the 19th of October, thirty- 
five days after it had entered the city. It still numbered 
eighty thousand fighting men and six hundred cannons, but 
was encumbered with camp-followers and vehicles. At 
Malo-Jaroslavetz a violent struggle took place on the 24th. 
The town was captured and recaptured seven times. It was 
finally left in the hands of the French. Here, however, the 
route changed. The road became increasingly difiicult, the 
cold grew intense, the ground was covered with snow, and 
the confusion in the quartermaster's department was 
terrible. When the army reached Smolensk, there were 
only fifty thousand men in the ranks (November 9). Napo- 
leon had taken minute precautions to provide supplies 
and reinforcements all along his line of retreat; but the 
heedlessness of his subalterns, and the ' dif&culty of being 
obeyed at such distances and in such a country, rendered his 
foresight useless. At Smolensk, where he hoped to find 
provisions and supplies, everything had been squandered. 
Meanwhile there was not a moment to lose ; Wittgenstein, 
with the army of the North, was coming up on the French 
right. Tchitchagof was occupying Minsk behind the Bere- 
sina, with the army which had just come from the banks of 
the Danube. Kutusof was near at hand. The three Rus- 
sian armies proposed to unite and bar the Beresina, which 
the French were obliged to cross. The French began their 
march, but the cold became suddenly intense ; all verdure 
had disappeared, and there being no food for the horses, they 
died by the thousand. The cavalry was forced to dismount ; 
it became necessary to destroy or abandon a large portion 
of the cannon and ammunition. The enemy surrounded the 
French columns with a cloud of Cossacks, who captured all 



616 THE EMPIRE. 

stragglers. On the following days the temperature mod- 
erated. Then arose another obstacle, — the mud, which pre- 
vented the advance ; and the famine was constant. 

Moreover, the retreat was one continuous battle. Ney, 
"the bravest of the brave," accomplished prodigies of valor. 
At Krasnoi the Emperor himself was obliged to charge at 
the head of his guard. When the Beresina was reached, 
the army was reduced to forty thousand fighting men, of 
whom one-third were Poles. The Eussians had burned the 
bridge of Borisof, and Tchitchagof, on the other shore, barred 
the passage. Fortunately a ford was found. The river was 
filled with enormous blocks of ice ; General Eble and his 
pontomers, plunged in the water up to their shoulders, 
built and rebuilt bridges across it. Almost all the ponto- 
niers perished of cold or were drowned. Then, while on the 
right of the river Ney and Oudinot held back the army of 
Tchitchagof, and Victor on the left that of Wittgenstein, 
the guard, with Napoleon, passed over. Victor, after hav- 
ing killed or wounded ten thousand of Wittgenstein's Rus- 
sians, passed over during the night. When, in the morning, 
the rear-guard began to cross the bridges, a crowd of fugi- 
tives rushed upon them. They were soon filled with a 
confused mass of cavalry, infantry, caissons, and fugitives. 
The Russians came up and poured a shower of shells upon 
the helpless crowd. This frightful scene has ever since 
been famous as the passage of the Beresina. The governor 
of Minsk had twenty-four thousand dead bodies picked up 
and burned. 

Napoleon conducted the retreat towards Wilna, where the 
French had large magazines. At Smorgoni he left the army, 
to repair in all haste to Paris, in order to prevent the dis- 
astrous efEects of the last events, and to form another army. 
The army which he had left struggled on under Murat. 
The cold grew still more intense, and twenty thousand men 
perished in three days. Ney held the enemy a long time 
in check with desperate valor ; he was the last to recross 
the ISTiemen (December 20). There the retreat ended, 
and with it this fatal campaign. Beyond that river the 
French left three hundred thousand soldiers, either dead or 
in captivity. And yet they had never once been defeated : 
it was the winter and hunger, not the enemy, which had 
destroyed the grand army. The Russians themselves, ha- 
bituated as they were to their terrible climate, suffered 



THE EMPIRE. 617 

horribly; in three weeks Kutusof had lost three-quarters 
of his effective force. 

The French armies were not more successful in Spain. 
The campaign of 1810 was marked by a failure of Mass^na 
before the impregnable lines of Torres Vedras ; that of 1811 
by the indecisive battle of Fuentes d'Onoro, between him 
and Wellington. In 1812 Wellington took Ciudad-Rodrigo 
and Badajoz, and defeated Marmont near Salamanca. 

German Campaign (1813). — The retreat from Moscow 
struck a mortal blow at the power of Napoleon. The king 
of Prussia joined the Czar, and the unfortunate French army 
was compelled to fall back from the Niemen to the Vistula, 
from the Vistula to the Oder, from the Oder to the Elbe. 
A sixth coalition was formed, composed of England, Russia, 
Prussia, Sweden, and Spain. Austria prepared secretly to 
join them. The allied sovereigns appealed to the strongest 
of popular passions, — national feeling. And Germany, for 
six years trodden under foot by French soldiers, listened 
with a terrible determination to the voices of her princes 
and her poets. The verses of Uhland, Arndt, and Korner 
were sung in castles and in cottages. Thus that great 
patriotic movement which, in 1792, had saved France, was 
now turned against her. 

Meanwhile Napoleon displayed his accustomed activity ; 
and though there was not a family that did not mourn a 
victim to these long wars, France, silent and mourning, 
still delivered up to him her children. He fitted out 
another army of two hundred thousand men, and was ready 
before the allies. He drove them back beyond the Elbe by 
the brilliant victory of Liitzen. The enemy was again de- 
feated at Bautzen, Saxony set free, and Silesia half con- 
quered. At this moment Napoleon halted and unwisely 
granted an armistice to the allies. The coalition breathed 
more freely and took courage. In Spain Wellington de- 
feated Joseph at Vittoria, which led to the loss of Spain. 
Suchet was obliged to abandon the South. Soult took up 
a position behind the Nive, but the English were on the 
Bidassoa, and were on the point of invading the soil of 
France. This event created a profound sensation. Napo- 
leon was not disturbed by it. Austria demanded of him 
the abandonment of the grand-duchy of Warsaw, Illyria, 
the Hanse towns, and the protectorate of the Confederation 
of the Rhine. These concessions would have detracted 



618 THE EMPIRE. 

nothing from the grandeur of France, as she would still 
retain the line of the Rhine and the Alps, and Holland and 
Italy. Unfortunately, Napoleon refused these demands. 
Austria then joined the allies with three hundred thousand 
men, and on the 16th of August hostilities commenced. 

The coalition had, in front of Napoleon, five hundred 
thousand soldiers, fifteen hundred cannons, and a reserve 
of two hundred and fifty thousand men. Two Frenchmen 
were among them : Bernadotte, now crown-prince of Sweden ; 
and Moreau, the conqueror of Hohenlinden, who, at the re- 
quest of Alexandei*, had returned from America to strike a 
mortal blow against his country. In spite of their numbers, 
the allies had adopted the plan of refusing battle to their 
unconquerable adversary, and of accepting it from his lieu- 
tenants. The Emperor had on the Elbe and under his 
command only three hundred thousand men; in spite of 
the inequality of numbers he endeavored to threaten Ber- 
lin, Breslau, and Prague at once, which weakened him in 
the centre, at Dresden, where he nevertheless dealt on 
the 26th and 27th of August a terrible blow at the allies. 
In this battle Moreau was mortally wounded. But mean- 
time severe defeats of Napoleon's lieutenants had rendered 
the victory useless, had lost Silesia, and had permitted 
Bliicher to advance into Saxony, Bernadotte to occupy 
Wittenberg. Then, from Wittenberg to Toplitz, the allies 
formed an arc of three hundred thousand sabres and bay- 
onets in front of the French, the extremities of which 
attempted to unite behind them and cut them off from 
the route to France ; and Germany was rising, Bavaria 
entered the coalition, and Baden and Wiirttemberg were 
about to follow its example. Napoleon tried again to cut 
this circle ; he concentrated his forces at Leipzig, and there 
fought a general battle. That fight, which the Germans call 
the battle of the nations, was the most sanguinary contest of 
modern history : one hundred and ninety thousand French- 
men sustained, for three whole days, the furioiis attack of 
three hundred thousand men. The French lost none of their 
positions, but the reserves of the artillery were exhausted ; 
at the end of the third day there remained only enough 
ammunition for about two hours' fighting, and the number 
of the enemy was constantly increasing. The army was 
forced to fall back without having been conquered ; but this 
voluntary retreat became disastrous ; a miner blew up the 



THE EMPIRE. 619 

bridge over the Elster before the last part of the army, 
with two marshals and the commanders of the corps, had 
crossed it. One hundred and twenty thousand men, of 
whom fifty thousand were French, were left lying on the 
fatal field (October 16-19.) 

Only one-fifth part of the French troops returned to 
France, and one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers 
were left useless in the fortresses of the Elbe, the Oder, 
and the Vistula, in which they were besieged and made 
heroic defences. 

Campaign in France (1814). — To save France a unani- 
mous awakening of the national spirit was needed ; but 
the impulse was gone ; the stream of recruitment was dry- 
ing up at its source. The bourgeoisie, who had saluted 
Napoleon's dictatorship when that dictatorship was saving 
the country from disorder, repulsed it now that it was lead- 
ing the country into fearful dangers ; at the moment when 
it was necessary that the whole nation should rally around 
Napoleon, the liberals gave the signal for an ill-timed and 
unfortunate opposition. The enemies of France wisely 
profited by these first symptoms of weariness and approach- 
ing defection. They published the famous declaration of 
Frankfort, in which they declared ''that they were not 
making war upon France, but upon the preponderance that 
Napoleon had too long exercised outside of the limits of his 
Empire." And they offered peace on condition that France 
should return to her natural limits. By these propositions 
the allies sought to separate the Emperor from the nation. 
They succeeded in doing so ; the Corps Legislatif, from 
whom Napoleon demanded an active co-operation, responded 
by complaining of his despotism and the war. It was at 
once adjourned sine die ; and Napoleon prepared for a des- 
perate struggle. 

He had now only sixty thousand soldiers against the three 
hundred thousand who were advancing, divided into two 
great armies : that of Silesia, under Bliicher ; that of Bohe- 
mia, under Schwartzenberg. The first crossed the Rhine, 
the Moselle, and the Meuse without resistance ; the second, 
violating Swiss neutrality, passed through the pass of Bel- 
fort and the Jura. The two intended to maintain communi- 
cation across the plateau of Langres. On the south, one 
hundred and sixty thousand English and Spaniards under 
Wellington were crossing the Pyrenees ; on the southeast, 



620 THE EMPIRE. 

eighty thousand Austrians were approaching from the Alps ; 
on the northeast, eighty thousand Swedes, Prussians, and 
Russians, under Bernadotte, were threatening Belgium ; and 
as though this immense force was not enough, four hundred 
thousand soldiers were raised in the rear of the active 
armies. Thus more than a million of armed men were 
about to rush upon France. 

On the 26th of January Napoleon hastened to Vitry-le- 
Francois, He failed to prevent the junction of the armies 
of Silesia and Bohemia. A few days after, he received the 
ultimatum of the allies ; this time they no longer conceded 
the natural limits of the Rhine and the Alps, but demanded 
that France should return to her boundaries of 1789. The 
Emperor indignantly refused. The allies now separated to 
march simultaneously upon Paris by way of the valley of 
the Seine and that of the Marne. Napoleon cut the long 
column of the Russians in two at Champaubert, and routed 
both divisions separately, winning four victories in five 
days. While he was on the Marne, Schwartzenberg ad- 
vanced down the valley of the Seine; his vanguard had 
already passed Melun; the French army marched thirty 
leagues in thirty-six hours, came up with the Austrians, and 
drove them before them. In eight days the Austrians lost 
ground to the extent of fifty leagues. Unfortunately, this 
pursuit of the Austrians on the upper Seine left the ap- 
proaches to Paris open on the northeast ; Bliicher, who had 
reinforced his army, marched thither a second time by way 
of the Marne. Napoleon hastened to meet him, and hurled 
him back in disorder. The Prussians concentrated near 
Laon, numbering one hundred thousand, and maintained 
that strong position in spite of the efforts of the Emperor to 
dislodge them. Napoleon then turned against the Russians 
and drove them out of Rheims (March 13). Schwartzen- 
berg, who during the absence of the little French army had 
advanced to within two days' march of Paris, was alarmed 
at seeing it return upon his flank : he halted and fell back. 

Thus in a month Napoleon had fought fourteen battles, 
gained twelve victories, and defended the approaches to his 
capital against the three great . hostile armies. But the 
struggle became more and more unequal. The defection 
of Murat gave Italy to the Austrians. Augereau opened 
to them the gates of Lyons ; Maison evacuated Belgium ; 
the English; under Wellington, entered Bordeaux, where 



THE EMPIRE. 621 

Louis XVIII. was proclaimed king (March 12) ; and the 
royalists were beginning agitation in the interior. 

The Czar resolved to bring to an end this astonishing 
struggle. He ordered Bliicher and Schwartzenberg to unite 
their forces and march together upon Paris. Napoleon 
vainly endeavored at Arcis-sur-Aube to hinder this junc- 
tion (March 20 and 21). Then he boldly resolved to leave 
open the route to Paris, and move with fifty thousand men 
upon the rear of the allies, cut off their communications, 
arouse once more the courage of the patriotic provinces, 
increase his army by a part of the garrisons of the for- 
tresses of the Moselle and by irregular levies, and then 
return upon the enemy and strike a terrible blow. If only 
Paris would defend herself, not a foreigner should recross 
the Rhine. 

But Paris did not defend herself. By utilizing all the 
resources which it afforded, seventy thousand fighting men 
could be collected and armed. Only twenty-two thousand 
men took part in the battle before Paris, against the eighty 
thousand Austrians of Schwartzenberg, the one hundred 
thousand Prussians of Bliicher (March 30). The resis- 
tance was heroic, but useless. The allies lost eighteen thou- 
sand men, almost as many as the French had in line : Marshal 
Marmont signed a suspension of arms and a capitulation, in 
order to spare the city the horrors of a capture by assault 
(March 31). 

Abdication of the Emperor (April 6, 1814). — The for- 
eigners, on entering the city, showed the greatest modera- 
tion. The Czar protested that the nation had only to 
manifest its wishes, and he would be ready to sustain them. 
The people evinced a gloomy resignation; but the Senate, 
convoked and directed by Talleyrand, appointed a provisional 
government, pronounced the deposition of Napoleon, adopted 
a new constitution, and called to the throne Louis XVIII., a 
brother of Louis XVI. Napoleon still had powerful forces 
at Fontainebleau ; with the armies of Eugene, Suchet, and 
Soult, who had just fought with Wellington the heroic bat- 
tle of Toulouse, he could collect one hundred and forty thou- 
sand experienced soldiers beyond the Loire. He thought 
for a moment of giving battle, but his generals were tired 
of war ; Ney, and even Berthier, left him. Then he abdi- 
cated ! Nine days after, he bade farewell to his old guard 
in words since celebrated, and departed for the island of 



622 THE EMPIRE. 

Elba. An island of a few square miles was now the whole 
empire of the man who for fifteen years had reigned over 
half of Europe. A few officers followed him into his exile, 
together with about four hundred men of the old guard. 

Thus the deadly duel which England had fought against 
France was over ; England had conquered. Napoleon had 
taken the empire of the land to fight against the masters of 
the ocean. For ten years he had gone on from victory to 
victory ; and always the inaccessible enemy had escaped 
him. He had conceived the mad project of marching even 
to Moscow, when his best soldiers were in the heart of 
Spain, and the soil of Germany, secretly undermined, was 
trembling under his feet. On his return, winter killed the 
grand army ; the nations arose ; the colossus fell ; in his 
fall he seemed to drag down the country itself. She has 
pardoned him, however, for she owes him glory incompara- 
ble. Victories gained by the superiority of genius, and not 
by that of numbers, immense works accomplished, industry 
awakened, agriculture encouraged, an enlightened, vigilant, 
and active administration, the unity of the country consoli- 
dated, and her greatness surpassing anything ever dreamed 
of, will always plead for him with posterity and with the 
heart of France. 

Moreover, in spite of his court of kings, his nobility, 
and in certain respects in spite of himself. Napoleon re- 
mains for the French the representative, and for Europe the 
armed soldier, of the Revolution. He preserved its civil 
institutions. He carried its spirit everywhere. By crown- 
ing parvenus, by forcing kings of the old stock and em- 
perors to bow before him, he destroyed the old prestige of 
the divine right of royalty. Spain, Italy, and Germany 
passed with ominous tremblings from under his control ; 
and in order to overthrow him, the kings were compelled to 
proclaim the rights of the people. He himself always rec- 
ognized his real origin even in the most glorious moments 
of his career. Thus, led by their instincts, the people were 
never deceived ; they who had paid for the Emperor's victo- 
ries with their blood, loved and regretted Napoleon. 

Nevertheless this powerful man of war and administra- 
tion, who will continue to be the greatest figure in military 
history, left France smaller by eighteen departments than 
he had found her, and drained of blood and gold. The mis- 
takes of the politician had brought ruin upon the invincible 



THE EMPIRE. 623 

general. And perhaps in this marvellous and terrible epic 
history will find one of the most memorable examples of the 
expiation which always follows after great errors. Disasters 
fell upon two victims ; but there were also two culprits : the 
Emperor and Prance ; of whom the one, after ten years of 
revolution, re-established the old regime under new forms, 
and ruined himself utterly, because he would place no 
restraint upon either his ambition or his genius ; while the 
other had deserved her misfortunes by throwing herself like 
a lost child into the arms of a young and glorious general, 
and to escape the burden of governing herself, had restored 
what she had just overthrown. 



624 THE FIRST RESTORATION AND 



CHAPTER LXVII. 

THE FIRST RESTORATION AND THE HUNDRED DAYS. 
(1814-1816 A.D.) 

The First Eestoration (April 6, 1814-Marcli 26, 1815). 
— While the great exile was journeying through France, 
Talleyrand, the real head of the provisional government, 
signed, on the 23d of April, a disastrous convention which 
reduced France to her frontiers of January 1, 1792. 

Louis XVIII. left England, and on the 24th of April 
landed at Calais. It was essential, at any price, to attract 
popularity to the Bourbon princes who had, for twenty-four 
years, been strangers to the country, who owed their for- 
tunes to its disasters, and derived their power from its ene- 
mies. But the new monarch, who entitled himself " king 
by the grace of God," replaced the tricolor by the white 
flag, and dated his accession from the death of his nephew 
Louis XVII., was little disposed to make concessions. The 
emperor Alexander, perceiving the necessity of liberal in- 
stitutions, sustained the constitutional propositions drawn 
up by Talleyrand and a committee of senators and deputies. 
The king was obliged to issue the Charte constitutionelle on 
the 4th of June. The following were its principles : — 

Hereditary royalty ; two chambers, one elective, the other, 
the Chamber of Peers, composed by the king, both having the 
right to vote upon taxation and to discuss the laws ; public 
and individual liberty, liberty of the press and of worship ; 
the inviolability of landed estates, even those acquired after 
confiscation ; the responsibility of ministers ; the immova- 
bility of judges ; the security of the public debt ; the free 
admissibility of all Frenchmen to all civil and military em- 
ployments ; the maintenance of the great institutions of the 
Empire : the Council of State, the Court of Cassation, the 
Court of Accounts, and the University. The treaty of peace 
was then signed, and the evacuation of France by the ene- 
mies' troops commenced. 

The charter satisfied the middle class. It was consoled 



THE HUNDRED DAYS. 625 

for the loss of glory and power by the hope of having at 
least found repose and liberty ; but with the Bourbons came 
the emigres, who threatened the new interests created by 
the Revolution. They disturbed the possessors of confis- 
cated property, they respected neither liberty of worship 
nor tolerance in religion. Eanks and honors were lavished 
upon the ^migr^s, while fourteen thousand officers who had 
won their epaulets in front of the enemy were retired on 
half-pay. Soldiers of the army of Cond^ became generals. 
Naval officers received the rank next superior to that which 
they had held previous to their emigration ; those who had 
served on the British fleet retained the rank bestowed upon 
them by the English admiralty. In ten months the govern- 
ment of Louis XVIII. had lost all credit. 

Return from Elba (March 20, 1815). — Meanwhile, from 
the island of Elba, Napoleon saw the mistakes of the Bour- 
bons accumulate and their unpopularity increase, and re- 
solved once more to try his fortune. He embarked with a 
few hundred men and landed near Cannes (March 1), and 
issued a stirring proclamation. Erom Cannes to Grenoble 
the little troop met with no obstacle. The Emperor frankly 
confessed that he had been mistaken in desiring to be- 
stow upon Erance the empire of the world, spoke only of 
peace and liberty, promised a constitution and constitutional 
guarantees. Near Grenoble he met the first troops sent 
against him. He advanced alone to meet them and said, 
" Is there one among you who wishes to kill his Emperor ? " 
The arms fell from the hands of the soldiers, and they 
answered by one great shout of '^ Vive l'Emj)ereur ! " La- 
b^doy^re brought over to him the 7th regiment of the line ; 
each soldier had resumed his tricolor cockade, which each 
had religiously preserved for ten months in the bottom of 
his knapsack. After that, the journey was a complete 
triumph. Ney, who had left Paris a devoted servant of 
the king, saw his regiments yield to the universal enchant- 
ment, and came himself to rejoin his old chief at Auxerre. 
On the 20th of March Napoleon re-entered the Tuileries, 
which Louis XVIII. had quitted the day before. Not a gun 
was fired in defence of the Bourbons, not a drop of blood 
had been shed for the re-establishment of the Empire ; an 
evidence that this revolution was not the result of a con- 
spiracy, but of a universal impulse. 

The Hundred Days (March 20-June 22). — The events 



626 THE FIRST RESTORATION AND 

which, had taken place during the year which had just passed 
had taught Napoleon that he had left out of his government 
one of the active forces of France, — the spirit of liberty. 
This force he now endeavored to win, and took measures 
intended to placate the liberal element. A new constitution 
{Acte additionnel), containing the principal provisions of 
the charter, was promulgated. Submitted to the people, it 
was passed by 1,500,000 yeas against 4206 nays. 

Nevertheless he had all Europe to fight against, and, in 
addition, civil war in La Vendue. The allied sovereigns, 
then assembled in congress at Vienna to divide the nations 
among them, declared that Napoleon had placed himself 
outside of the pale of public law : they resolved to inflict 
the severest chastisement npon France. Such declarations 
excited the patriotic ardor of the French. Citizens, artisans, 
peasants, offered their aid, and all who were willing to join 
the regiments and place themselves under military law were 
accepted. But there was in a }3art of the country an extreme 
weariness, and in the official regions much distrust. The 
Emperor himself was conscious of a loss of spirit ; he no 
longer believed in his good fortune ; " I had," said he after- 
wards, "a presentiment of misfortune." Nevertheless he 
employed all his energies ; he worked sixteen hours out of the 
twenty-four. In fifty days an army of one hundred and eighty- 
two thousand regular troops was organized. Another, of two 
hundred thousand national guards, was prepared for the 
defence of fortresses, and as a reserve of the active army. 

The troops of the allies were all ready to enter upon the 
campaign. Austria sent towards the Khine and the Alps 
three hundred thousand Germans ; one hundred and seventy 
thousand Russians would reach Mainz on the 1st of July. 
Already there were ninety-five thousand English and Dutch 
in Belgium under Wellington, and one hundred and twenty- 
four thousand Prussians under Bliicher. The arrival of 
the Eussians was waited for, in order to commence opera- 
tions. 

Battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815).— The Emperor de- 
termined to anticipate the enemy's attack. A great vic- 
tory in Belgium might effect great changes. He crossed 
the Sambre with one hundred and twenty-four thousand 
men and three hundred and fifty pieces of cannon (June 
15) . He expected to surprise the Prussians ; but Bliicher, 
warned of the danger, had time to concentrate his forces at 



TEE HUNDRED DAYS. 627 

Ligny. The French advanced divided into three corj^s ; the 
right wing under Grouchy, the centre under the direct com- 
mand of Napoleon, the left under Ney. The right and the 
centre were to confront the Prussians, the left was to seize 
upon Quatre-Bras and arrest the progress of the English, 
then to fall upon the Prussians and complete their rout. 
This plan was only half executed ; the English had time to 
establish themselves in force at Quatre-Bras ; and though 
Ney with his indomitable energy succeeded in holding them 
back, he could not co-operate in the attack upon the Prus- 
sians. The Emperor had a terrible engagement with them 
at Ligny ; at length they fled, after having suffered consid- 
erable loss, but without having been destroyed as they might 
have been (June 16). 

The Prussians seemed for the moment to be thrown back 
upon Namur ; it was time to turn his attention to the Eng- 
lish. Napoleon marched upon them on the 17th. Welling- 
ton had gathered together seventy thousand men in front of 
the village of Waterloo on the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean. 
He had long studied this position, and was determined to 
defend himself there to the last extremity. Napoleon left 
Grouchy thirty-four thousand men, with orders to follow 
the Prussians toward Namur. He himself with the rest of 
his forces joined Ney in order to attack the English. The 
Erench army numbered only seventy-two thousand men, but 
was full of enthusiasm. Wellington, having only one road 
upon which to retreat, would be destroyed unless he con- 
quered. He sent word to Bliicher to send him two of his 
corps ; Bliicher replied that he would come with all. Well- 
ington counted therefore on the Prussians, but Napoleon 
counted on Grouchy to hold them back. 

The rain which had fallen in torrents on the 17th and 
during the ensuing night had made the ground an expanse 
of mire. On the 18th, about eleven o'clock, the sun ap- 
l)eared, and the battle began. Napoleon first attacked the 
chateau of Hougoumont, on which Wellington's right rested, 
intending to dravv^ off troops from the English centre ; then 
he would pierce the centre at the plateau Mont-Saint-Jean, 
cut the English off from Brussels, and throw their defeated 
right wing back into Flanders. Wellington, in fact, brought 
the best of his troops to the defence of Hougoumont, and a 
desperate struggle raged there for four hours ; the English 
held the position. During this feigned attack Napoleon 



628 THE FIRST RESTORATION AND 

collected a powerful battery of seventy-eight pieces and 
directed a tremendous fire upon Mont-Saint- Jean, then threw 
ISTey upon La Haie-Sainte, a hamlet which was situated at 
the foot of the hill. The heavy artillery of the marshal 
made frightful ravages in the English ranks. For a mo- 
ment they seemed disconcerted ; at this moment, when Key 
attempted to bring forward his artillery, the twelve-pound- 
ers stuck, and were vigorously attacked by the English. 
They were in turn charged and cut to pieces by the sabres 
of the French cavalry; but a grievous disorder had been 
produced. But Ney, continually advancing, finally reached 
La Haie-Sainte, and took possession of it. The English 
army was a second time thrown into confusion. In order 
to turn this confusion into a rout, Napoleon was about to 
charge with his guard. Suddenly cannons were heard 
thundering behind the French lines. " Is it Grouchy ? " 
was heard on all sides. 

It was Btilow, who was debouching on the right of the 
French army with thirty thousand Prussians, brought up 
by a forced march. The Emperor was obliged to send 
against him Lobau's corps and the guard with which he had 
intended to sustain ISTey. Wellington recognized the prom- 
ised aid, and took the offensive on the side toward La Haie- 
Sainte. On seeing this, all the French cavalry, even the 
reserves, rushed confusedly upon the fatal plateau, to cut 
down the enemy's cavalry. The latter, opening to right 
and left, unmasked twenty pieces of cannon which vomited 
death, and the whole of Wellington's infantry formed into 
squares. The French horsemen charged the English lines ; 
eleven times they charged and sabred them ; several were 
broken, but they formed anew. At seven o'clock the French 
cavalry were driven from the plateau ; they had occupied it 
two hours. Finally Napoleon formed a column of four bat- 
talions of the guard ; but he was too late ; the English army 
had reappeared at the crest of the plateau. Three volleys 
of artillery broke successively upon the guard as it ad- 
vanced ; two battalions were entirely destroyed by the vol- 
leys. Napoleon then called to him the troops which were 
occupying Hougoumont, joined them to those of Ney, in- 
spirited them by a few words, and ordered a general attack. 
It was eight o'clock in the evening. The French soldiers 
charged the enemy with admirable enthusiasm ; several of 
the English squares were broken through and cut to pieces. 







Prarjvpar.l. rnHlemm 



Hiichftfe etl'\ 



Oraoe par E. Oeortfe. 



ii^Mi 



THE HUNDRED DAYS. 629 

Suddenly a tremendous cannonading was heard on the 
extreme right of the French army. " It is Grouchy," again 
cried all the soldiers. But it was Bliicher, who, at the head 
of thirty-six thousand Prussians, was coming up after Billow, 
upon the right flank of the French. Then the last army of 
France, pressed in front by all that remained of Wellington's 
ninety thovisand men, on the right by the sixty-six thousand 
Prussians of Bliicher and Billow, was dashed together, with 
ranks all in disorder, and soon there was nothing but a dread- 
ful confusion. Napoleon, in desperation, drew his sword 
and was about to rush into the midst of the enemy : his 
generals surrounded him and led him away on the road 
toward G^nappe. 

It was after nine o'clock ; night had fallen on the terrible 
field of battle, and still the struggle continued. The old 
guard formed six squares ; five were successively destroyed 
by an enemy thirty times as numerous : one only still re- 
mained, that of Cambronne. They bravely refused to sur- 
render, and alone, against the whole army of the enemy, 
they charged with their bayonets in order to give their be- 
loved chief time to escape.- Other battalions of the guard, 
with Lobau, checked half of the Prussian army for an hour 
and a half, until the immense crowd, protected by their sacri- 
fice, had passed on upon the route to Charleroi. 

The battle of Waterloo had lasted ten hours; "a battle 
of giants," which cost France thirty thousand men killed, 
wounded, or captured, and the victors twenty-two thousand. 
Seventy-two thousand Frenchmen had fought against one 
hundred and fifteen thousand of the enemy, and had twice 
seen victory escape from their hands. So ended this four 
days' campaign. 

Second Abdication of the Emperor (June 22, 1815). — 
The retreat was as disastrous as those from Leipzig and 
from Moscow. From Laon Napoleon set out for Paris. 
He entered the capital at midnight and established himself 
in the Elys^e. He counted on the patriotism of the Cham- 
bers. " Let them stand by me," said he, '' and nothing is 
lost." But the Chamber of Eepresentatives failed him. A 
message was sent to him demanding his abdication. Napo- 
leon resigned himself to fate and abdicated in favor of his 
son, proclaiming him Napoleon II., Emperor of the French. 
The Assembly accepted this abdication, but without at all 
mentioning the name of Napoleon II. A provisional gov- 



630 THE FIR8T RESTORATION AND 

ernmeiit was appointed, aud a special committee was charged 
with negotiating with the allies. But the latter refused 
all offers of peace. Wellington and Bliicher marched directly 
upon Paris — an imprudent step ; but the president of the 
provisional government, Fouche, managed everything in 
their favor. 

St. Helena. — Threatened with being delivered up to the 
enemy, Napoleon departed for Eochefort, thinking of seek- 
ing an asylum in the United States. But all ways of escape 
were guarded : after long uncertainty, he went on board an 
English vessel, the Bellerophon, and gave himself up, and 
wrote to the regent of England an admirable letter, declar- 
ing that he had come, like Themistocles, to seat himself at 
the hearth of the British nation, and to claim the protection 
of ''the most powerful, the most constant, and the most 
generous of my enemies." The English government treated 
him as a prisoner of war. The Emperor was taken to St. 
Helena, an island in the midst of the AtMitic Ocean, under 
a burning sun, five hundred leagues fmni any land. Not 
considering the deadly climate and the /weariness of solitude 
and inaction sufficient suffering for the ardent genius who 
for fifteen years had astonished the world, the English min- 
istry allowed the immortal captive to be annoyed by petty 
insults. Napoleon endured his tortures with calm dignity, 
and occupied the mournful leisure of his captivity in dic- 
tating the history of his campaigns. After six years, which 
were six years of moral suffering and material privation, he 
died at Longwood on the 5tli of May, 1821, at four o'clock 
in the morning, wrapped in his military cloak, while a 
tropical hurricane was sweeping over the island and tearing 
up by the roots many of the largest trees, " as though the 
spirit of storms, borne on the wings of the wind, was hasten- 
ing to inform the world that a mighty spirit had just de- 
scended into the sombre abysses of nature." 

Treaties of 1815. — In the shipwreck of the Empire, 
Erance barely escaped total destruction. Neither the Cham- 
ber nor the government knew how to defend Paris. Davout, 
minister of war, came to an understanding with Fouch^, and 
signed a convention by which the French army was to 
retire beyond the Loire, without firing a gun. The allies 
took possession of Paris as of a conquered city. Bliicher 
proposed to blow up the bridge of Jena and overturn the 
column of the Grand Army. The museum of the Louvre 



THE HUNDRED DAYS. 631 

Avas despoiled of tlie masterpieces Avliich had been trans- 
ported thitlier : the allies closed the hall of the Chamber of 
Deputies, and re-established Louis XVIII. on the throne. 
This second restoration cost France dear. Eirst of all, it 
was compelled to pay the allies another war indemnity of 
800,000,000 fr. and 370,000,000 more of special claims. One 
hundred and fifty thousand foreign soldiers remained for 
three years on French soil, maintained and fed at French 
expense. Finally, the treaty of Paris (November 20) 
took from France Philippeville, Marienburg, the duchy of 
Bouillon, Saarlouis and the course of the Saar, Landau, 
several communes of the country of Gex and Savoy, all of 
which the treaty of 1814 had left her ; in all five hundred 
and thirty-four thousand inhabitants. After twenty-five 
years of victories, the national territory found itself less 
extensive in certain directions than it had been a century 
before, at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. ; and during 
that century the other powers had all vastly increased their 
strength. 

Moreover, the treaties of 1815 had perfidiously exposed 
the frontiers of France. Important strategic points were 
wrested from her. Bavaria was placed at her gates in the 
Palatinate, Prussia established in the valley of the MoseUe, 
the kingdom of the Netherlands erected so as to keep from 
her the mouths of the Meuse and the Scheldt, while the 
gift of the kingdom of Lombardy to Austria re-established 
the Austrian influence in the Italian peninsula at the ex- 
pense of the French. Finally, by the treaty of the Holy 
Alliance, all Europe, which Napoleon had tried to unite 
under his power, united against France. 



APPENDIX. 

SUMMAKY OF EvENTS FKOM 1815 TO 1870. 

I. 

THE RESTORATION. 

Royalist Reaction. — The Eoyalists revenged themselves 
cruelly for their second exile. Marshal Ney, Lab^doy^re, 
and four other generals were put to death; others were 
condemned to death by default ; three were assassinated, and 
a bloody reaction in the South caused men to be killed 
who were suspected of regretting the imperial regime. 
Religious hatred was added to political hatred, and many 
Protestants perished. Finally, a law in December, 1815, 
instituted for three years provosts' courts, which soon ob- 
tained an evil celebrity. Thus the restored monarchy had 
its massacres and its Terror, commonly called the White 
Terror. 

The Chamber of Deputies undertook to suppress the 
Charter and to undo the social work of the Eevolution by 
restoring to the clergy and the aristocracy the political r61e 
which they had played under the old regime. Louis XVIII. 
was obliged to dismiss these too devoted servants (Novem- 
ber, 1816), and a new and more moderate Chamber began 
the era of representative government in France. This 
Chamber adopted an electoral law which fixed the qualifi- 
cation of the electors at three • hundred francs, that of those 
eligible at one thousand francs. Thanks to the Duke of 
Hichelieu and the generosity of the Czar Alexander, the 
occupation of the French territory by the foreign armies 
ceased two years before the time fixed by the treaties. 

Assassination of the Duke of Berry. — The progress of the 
Liberals was slow but continuous, and they were beginning 
to acquire a preponderance in the Chamber, as well as in 



THE RESTORATION. 633 

the country. The assassination of the Duke of Berry, the 
king's nephew, inclined, the balance again to the side of the 
Eoyalists. On the 13th of February, 1820, the duke was at 
the opera ; as he was escorting the duchess to her carriage, 
a miscreant named. Louvel stabbed, him. The Liberal cause 
was held responsible for this crime, and a reactionary min- 
istry was formed which started the government on the fatal 
path which led it to its fall in 1830. 

Alliance of the Altar and the Throne. — Individual liberty 
was suspended, the censorship of journals re-established, 
and the political powers of the great landed proprietors in- 
creased. The birth of the Duke of Bordeaux, a posthumous 
son of the Duke of Berry (September, 1820), the death of 
Napoleon (May, 1821), increased the joy and hopes of the 
ultra-Eoyalists, who brought M. de Vill^le into the ministry. 
Then the restoration of its ancient prerogatives to royalty, 
and especially to the Church, was spoken of openly. The 
Jesuits returned to France ; they at once attacked their 
most formidable adversary, the University, by causing the 
lectures of Cousin and Guizot to be stopped (1822). 

The Liberals protested, as oppressed parties always do, 
by conspiracies. To the Congregation formed by the ultra- 
Eoyalists, which numbered fifty thousand members, they 
opposed the society of the Carbonari, which was recruited 
principally from the schools, the bar, and the army. Car- 
bonarism spread its roots all through France, into Germany, 
Italy, and Spain, and undertook several armed insurrections. 

Expedition into Spain. — The conquerors of 1814 and 
1815, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, had formed a Holy 
Alliance in order to stifle the liberal ideas which the Eevo- 
lution had sown abroad in the world, and which were fer- 
menting everywhere. They were violently suppressed in 
Germany, in Naples, and in Piedmont, and the French 
government received from the Congress of Verona (1822) 
a commission to take the field against them in Spain. The 
army which entered Spain in April, 1823, had little occasion 
to fight and met with no serious resistance except at Cadiz, 
which it successfully besieged. This expedition, quite with- 
out glory, was also without profit. Ee-established in his 
absokite power, the king of Spain would not listen to the coun- 
sels of moderation. The Liberals of France held their govern- 
ment responsible for the acts of violence committed by Ferdi- 
nand VII., and had the majority in the country on their side. 



634 THE RESTORATION. 

Charles X. ; Villele. — The death of Louis XVIII., a pru- 
dent and moderate king, seemed to assure the triumph of 
the ultra-Eoyalists by causing tlie power to pass into the 
hands of the Count of Artois (September, 1824). In 1789 
this prince had given the signal for emigration: he had 
learned nothing, forgotten nothing, and would not listen to 
his brother's advice. He believed himself called to restore 
the ancient monarchy, regardless of the Charter. In the 
earliest days of his reign he demanded of the Chamber, 
through M. de Villele, an indemnity of 1,000,000,000 fr. for 
the 6migr^s, the re-establishment of nunneries, and of the 
right of primogeniture, and a law of extreme severity against 
sacrilege. The deputies granted all. In May, 1825, the 
new king had himself crowned after the ancient ceremonial. 

Meantime the Liberal party was gaining in the country 
every day. In letters and in the arts a great movement 
was noticed in favor of liberty. In the Parliament men of 
talent or authority, Chateaubriand, Eoyer-CoUard, De Brog- 
lie, etc., served the cause of public liberty ; the leading 
journals, which were then establishing a new power in the 
State, that of the press, defended that cause openly ; teachers 
popularized it in the higher educational institutions. The 
great cities were in the opposition ; Paris was wholly devoted 
to it. At a royal review of the national guard in April, 
1827, the cry, " Down with the ministers," resounded through 
the ranks. The same evening the national guard was dis- 
banded, which caused the complete withdrawal of the sup- 
port of the bourgeoisie from the court. The general elections 
sent to the Chambers a Liberal majority before which the 
VilMe ministry fell (December, 1827). 

All parties manifested their sympathy for the Greeks, 
who were trying by force of heroism to recover their inde- 
pendence. They seemed likely to succumb in their unequal 
struggle with the Turks, when England, Prance, and Russia 
united to save them. The three allied fleets annihilated the 
Turkish navy at Navarino (September, 1827). France also 
sent into the Morea troops, who recaptured, in a short 
time, all the cities occupied by the Ottomans: Greece was 
delivered. 

Ministries of Martignac and Polignac. — In January, 1828, 
a new cabinet was formed under M. de Martignac. His 
intentions were honest and liberal, and his acts generally 
approved. He abolished the censorship of journals, sought 



THE JULY MONARCHY. 635 

to prevent electoral frauds, and gradually reconciled France 
■with the Bourbons. Unfortunately Charles X. supported 
his ministry without liking it, and in August, 1829, profiting 
by a slight check imprudently inflicted by the Chambers 
upon his ministers, he replaced them by M. de Polignac, M. 
de Labourdonnaie, and M. de Bourmont. The choice of 
these men was a declaration of war on the part of royalty 
against the country ; a crisis became inevitable. The depu- 
ties declared in their reply to the king's speech, that the 
ministry had not their confidence. The Chamber was dis- 
solved, but the two hundred and twenty-one signers of the 
address were all re-elected, and royalty, defeated in the 
elections, determined to make a revolution itself. It was 
encouraged to do so by a military success, the expedition to 
Algiers, undertaken to avenge an affront to the French con- 
sul. Thirty-seven thousand men landed in June, 1830, upon 
the African coast, defeated the Algerians, and obtained 
possession of the city. 

Revolution of 1830. — On the 26th of the same month 
appeared a series of ordinances which suppressed the liberty 
of the press, annulled the last elections, and created a new 
electoral system. It was a coiq) d'etat against the public 
liberties and the Charter, and Paris responded to this vio- 
lation of the constitution by the three days' outbreak of 
July 27, 28, and 29, 1830. In spite of the bravery of the 
royal guard and the Swiss, Charles X. was conquered. He 
abdicated in favor of his grandson, the Duke of Bordeaux, 
and went again into exile. Six thousand victims had fallen 
either killed or wounded. On the 9th of August the Cham- 
ber of Deputies raised to the throne the head of the younger 
branch of the house of Bourbon, the Duke of Orleans, who 
took the name of Louis Philippe I,, and the title of King of 
the French. 



II. 

THE JULY MONARCHY. 
(1830-1848 A.D.) 



Xing Louis Philippe. — The private virtues of the Duke of 
Orleans, his handsome family, his former connections with 
the head of the Liberal party, his bourgeois habits, the popu- 



636 THE JULY MONARCHY. 

lar education given to his sons in the public schools, all 
encouraged the hopes of the people. The duke was pro- 
claimed king on the 9th of August, after having sworn to 
observe the revised charter. The changes made in the con- 
stitutional compact were not extensive : the abolition of 
heredity in the peerage and of the censorship of the journals ; 
the establishment of the qualification for eligibility at five 
hundred francs, and the electoral qualification at two hun- 
dred francs ; and the suppression of the article which recog- 
nized the Catholic religion as the religion of the State. But 
in 1814 Louis XVIII. had appeared to grant a charter as an 
act of grace ; in 1830 Louis Philippe accepted one which 
was imposed upon him by the deputies. This fact consti- 
tuted the whole revolution. G-eneral La Fayette was ap- 
pointed commander of the national guard of France, and 
M. Laf&tte was called to the ministry. 

On the news of the revolution at Paris, revolutionary 
movements broke out elsewhere, throughout Europe. In 
Switzerland, the aristocratic governments fell ; in Germany, 
liberal innovations were introduced. Italy was agitated; 
Spain prepared for a revolution; Belgium separated from 
Holland ; England even, agitated and in commotion, forced 
the Tories to grant the Reform Bill. 

But should France make herself the champion of Euro- 
pean insurrections, at the risk of stirring up a general war ? 
The new king thought not. Belgium offered to join France ; 
the offer was repulsed, in order not to excite the jealousy of 
England. The Spanish refugees wished to attempt a revolu- 
tion in their country ; they were stopped upon the frontier, 
in order not to violate international law. Poland received 
no substantial aid. Italy, bound by Austria, was laboring 
to break her fetters ; M. Laffitte desired to aid her in the 
struggle. The king refused to sanction his course, and 
called Casimir P^rier to the presidency of the council. 

Ministry of Casimir Perier (1831-1832). — Casimir P^rier 
declared that he would maintain order within the country, 
and that he would not involve France in a general war, but 
would make for universal peace any sacrifice compatible with 
the honor of the country. Separation was exacted from 
Dom Miguel, in Portugal, for outrages on French subjects. 
The Dutch were forced to give up their attempts to reconquer 
Belgium. By the occupation of Ancona the Austrians were 
obliged to abandon their intervention in the Papal States. 



THE JULY MONARCHY. 637 

In the interior, the president of the council pursued, with 
the same energy, the line of conduct which he had traced 
out for himself. A revolt of the legitimists in the west, 
insurrections of the workmen at Lyons and Grenoble, and 
plots in Paris were suppressed. Such was the ministry of 
Casimir Perier ; an energetic struggle for the cause of order, 
in which his strong will never succumbed to any obstacle. 

Ministry of Broglie, Guizot, and Thiers. — Socialistic agita- 
tion prevailed. In June the Republicans of Paris threw up 
barricades, but they were overcome by the national guard. 
In July, the death of the son of Napoleon, the Duke of 
Reichstadt, relieved the Orleans dynasty of a formidable 
competitor. Another pretender also lost his cause. The 
Duchess of Berry had appeared in the west, attempting to 
stir up a civil war, in the name of her son, Henry V. But 
there were no longer either Yendeans or Chouans. The new 
ideas had penetrated there as well as elsewhere. A f&w 
gentlemen, some irreconcilables, a few peasants, responded 
to the appeal. The country was promptly pacified, and the 
duchess, after having wandered about a long time, was cap- 
tured and imprisoned ; and a little later, permanently discred- 
ited by the necessity of avowing a secret marriage. 

Foreign Affairs ; the Quadruple Alliance. — In 1832 the 
citadel of Antwerp was taken by French forces, and the 
permanent occupation of Algeria assured. In the East, 
French diplomacy intervened between the Sultan and his 
victorious vassal, the Pasha of Egypt, and strengthened the 
latter as guardian, for France and Europe, of the two great 
commercial routes of the Eed Sea and the Gulf of Persia. 
In Portugal, Dom Miguel, an absolutist prince, had been 
driven from the throne in favor of Donha Maria da Gloria, 
who gave her people a constitutional charter. In Spain, 
Ferdinand VII., dying, excluded from the crown his brother 
Don Carlos, who sustained the reactionary party. The 
treaty of the Quadruple Alliance, signed in April, 1834, 
between the cotirts of Paris, London, Lisbon, and Madrid, 
promised the new Spanish and Portuguese governments the 
efficient aid of the two great constitutional countries against 
the ill will of the northern courts. 

Internal Affairs. — The Chambers adopted a law which 
finally organized primary instruction (1833). On important 
questions the majority went with the ministry. An attempt 
upon the life of the king gave royalty an opportunity to 



638 THE JULY MONARCHY. 

profit by the horror which such crimes always inspire. The 
insurrections of April, 1834, at Lyons and Paris, and the 
trial of one hundred and sixty-four Republicans before 
the Court of Peers, brought about the immediate ruin of 
this party as a militant faction. The violent members of 
the party again had recourse to assassination. At a review 
in July, 1835, one Pieschi directed against the king an 
infernal machine, which struck dead at the king's side 
Marshal Mortier and several others ; in all, eighteen were 
killed and wounded, among whom were five generals. The 
ministry profited by the universal indignation, to present 
more stringent laws upon criminal procedure and the press. 

External Policy. — The cause of order had been energeti- 
cally sustained in the interior ; now that it was triumphant, 
M. Thiers, who in February, 1836, had become president of 
the Council of Ministers, desired to assume abroad the r61e of 
Casimir Perier. He proposed to intervene in Spain for the 
repression of the Ca,rlists, and to inaugurate a more vigorous 
prosecution of war in Algeria. He ordered Marshal Clausel 
to attack Constantine, the strongest fortress in all Africa. 
Thus the government having suppressed internal troubles, 
would provide abroad an outlet for the activity of Prance. 
He wished to add to order a little glory. The king willingly 
agreed to the expedition against Constantine, but he refused 
his consent to the intervention in Spain. M, Thiers left the 
ministry, in which he was succeeded by M. MoM (Septem- 
ber, 1836), as president of the Council. 

At first the ministry of M. Mol6 was unfortunate. Mar- 
shal Clausel, left without sufficient means, failed in the 
expedition against Constantine. Prince Louis Napoleon 
Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon, attempted to excite to 
revolt the garrison of Strassburg (October, 1836). He was 
arrested and sent out of the kingdom ; his accomplices were 
arraigned before the jury, but acquitted. But these failures 
were compensated for in the following years by some suc- 
cesses. The province of Oran was pacified; the army 
finally planted its banner upon the walls of Constantine 
(1837) ; in order to terminate long-standing quarrels with 
Mexico, an expedition was sent out which took possession 
of San Juan d'Ulloa, the capture of which gave the French 
the control of Vera Cruz and the principal custom-house of 
the country. Mexico paid a war indemnity. In all these 
affairs the king's sons distinguished themselves. Finally, 



THE JULY MONARCHY. 639 

the b-irtli of a son to the Duke of Orleans (1838) seemed to 
consolidate the power of the dynasty. The old king gave 
the child the title of Count of Paris. 

Parliamentary Coalition. — Meantime in the Parliament 
a severe attack upon the ministry Avas being inaugurated. 
The recall of the French troops from Ancona, the cession of 
certain Belgian districts to the king of Holland, the refusal 
of the Powers to leave the province of Luxemburg in hands 
friendly to France, excited displeasure. With more care 
for the national honor, it was said, with more confidence in 
the strength of the country, these useless concessions to the 
system of peace at any price might have been avoided. 
But the real pretext for these attacks was the alleged 
insufficiency of the ministry. M. Guizot, the leader of the 
doctrinaires, a small party, but one full of talent and ambi- 
tion, M. Thiers, the leader of a group of the left centre, and 
M. Odilon Barrot, formed a coalition against it. 

The ministry wished to retire (January, 1839). The 
king refused to accept their resignations and appealed to 
the country, proclaiming the dissolution of the Chamber. 
The ministry was defeated and overthrown. Rivalries 
broke out in the coalition over the formation of a new min- 
istry. After a prolonged ministerial crisis, accompanied by 
an outbreak in Paris, a cabinet was constituted under the 
presidency of Marshal Soult. None of the heads of the 
coalition took part in it. It lasted less than a year. Its 
principal achievement was the suppression of a revolt in 
Algeria under Abd-el-Kader. 

The Eastern Question. — The most important affair of this 
cabinet was the Eastern Question. The Sultan had desired 
to recapture Syria from the Pasha of Egypt, but the son of 
Mehemet Ali, Ibrahim Pasha, had defeated the Ottomans. 
This victory opened to him the route to Constantinople. 
Should he march upon that city, the Russians would take 
possession of it under pretext of defending it; and once 
within its walls, they would perhaps never leave it. France, 
by her intervention, arrested the victorious Ibrahim. Eng- 
land then, in order at once to strengthen Turkey and weaken 
Egypt, planned to despoil Mehemet Ali of Syria. France had, 
in Constantinople, interests identical with those of Great 
Britain ; but in Egypt the interests of the two seemed op- 
posed. But in covering Constantinople the ministry made 
no stipulation in favor of Mehemet Ali, and accepted as regu- 



640 THE JULY MONARCHY. 

lator in the affair a European Congress, in which it could, 
in advance, count upon four out of five votes against it. 

Ministry of Thiers. — On the 1st of March, 1840, M. 
Tliiers succeeded Marshal Soult as prime minister. After 
ten years of peace and material security the country was 
prosperous ; but it was in a state of agitation. The minister 
tried to gain popularity by issuing an ordinance of amnesty. 
This was equivalent to restoring their chiefs to the Eepub- 
licans. At the same time he increased the strength of the 
new party which was forming around the representative of 
the Napoleonic dynasty, by obtaining from England the 
restoration of the remains of the Emperor Napoleon, which 
were brought from St, Helena with great honor, by a fleet 
under the command of one of the king's sons. 

Treaty of London. — But important events were taking 
place in the East. France and Mehemet Ali were warm 
allies. Europe, and particularly England, resolved to break 
up this alliance which placed under the same control Toulon, 
Algiers, Alexandria, Beirut, and the fleets of Erance and 
Egypt, and assured Erance the preponderance in the Med- 
iterranean. In July England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia 
signed, without the participation of France, the treaty of 
London, which was to wrest Syria from the Pasha of Egypt. 
At this news a quiver of anger passed over the whole 
country; the government appeared to take part in this 
legitimate explosion of national feeling, yet was unwilling 
to engage in war under circumstances so disadvantageous. 
Desiring, however, to enable France to adopt a firm and dig- 
nified attitude, it began the fortification of Paris, and in- 
creased the army. Yet the isolated condition of France had 
its perils. The king was alarmed. He abandoned his min- 
istry; M. Thiers gave place to M. Guizot (October, 1840). 

Ministry of M. Guizot. — M. Guizot did not make enough 
of public opinion or national sentiment. He hastened to 
hold out his hand to England and the Powers, and caused 
France to return into what was called the European concert. 
This was equivalent to a treaty of peace. Disarmament im- 
mediately ensued, the army was reduced, and France was 
thrown back into the peaceful paths of commerce and 
industry. The activity of commercial transactions mani- 
fested the confidence which the upper n.iiddle class placed 
in the continuance of the ministry, which was, to their 
minds, the personification of peace. 



THE JULY MONARCHY. 641 

In July, 1842, the Duke of Orleans, an amiable and deserv- 
edly beloved prince, was thrown from his carriage and 
killed, and a child of four years became the heir to the 
most burdensome of crowns. The hopes of the Legitimists 
revived ; and the Liberals and Kepublicans expected their 
ideas to triumph, through the inevitable weakness of a 
regency. The Duke of Nemours, the least distinguished of 
the king's sons, was named regent. 

The national feeling had been deeply wounded by the 
events of 1840. M. Guizot sought to compensate for this 
by various acquisitions in the Pacific. But little success re- 
sulted. In the Society Islands, at Tahiti, an English mis- 
sionary had excited the natives against the French. He was 
■ driven from the island (1844) ; but his reports made a stir 
in the English Parliament, and the French cabinet com- 
mitted the blunder of asking the Chambers to vote an in- 
demnity for a man who had caused the blood of French 
soldiers to be shed. Other similar concessions increased 
the public irritation ; they were considered fresh proofs of 
French weakness in the face of England. The recognition 
of a right of visitation on the part of England, in 1841, for 
the repression of the slave-trade, excited so intense an oppo- 
sition, that the Chamber forced the minister to cancel the 
treaty. 

Defeat and Capture of Abd-el-Kader. — For operations in 
Algeria, the minister had the good sense to choose an able 
and energetic man. General Bugeaud, who was capable of 
inspiring the Arabs with both fear and respect. Abd-el- 
Kader had violated his treaty, preached the Holy War, and, 
by the rapidity of his movements, spread terror through the 
province of Oran, and anxiety even to the gates of Algiers. 
The general pursued him without pausing as far as the 
western mountains, pacified that difiicult region, and drove 
the enemy back into the desert. Having taken refuge in 
Morocco, Abd-el-Kader induced its emperor to take up arms 
in his cause. France replied to these provocations by the 
bombardment of Tangier and Mogadore, and by the victory 
of Isly, which General Bugeaud gained against much su- 
perior numbers. The Emperor made peace, and after a 
time, expelled Abd-el-Kader from his dominions. He was 
at once captiired (iSTovember, 1847). 

The Spanish Marriage. — Good relations with England 
were unwisely disturbed by the marriage of the Duke of 



642 THE JUL Y MONARCHY. 

Montpensier with the sister of the queen of Spain. The 
younger branch of the house of Bourbon was eager to in- 
herit the fortune of the elder branch in the Peninsula, and 
to deprive an English candidate of the reversion of Spain, as 
though time had not divested princely unions of almost all 
importance. England manifested great discontent at being 
outwitted. The ministry then, alarmed at the isolation in 
which France was about to be placed, made advances to 
Austria, and to win her, sacrificed to her Switzerland and 
Italy. Switzerland was then trying to reform her constitu- 
tion so as to give more authority to the central power. But 
M. Gruizot combated the Liberal party and favored the Son- 
derbund (the Separatists, 1847). The Austrians had occu- 
pied Eerrara and committed odious deeds of violence at 
Milan (Eebruary, 1848). M. Guizot contented himself with 
negotiating in favor of the victims. Thus France became 
the ally of an empire whose policy was then entirely one of 
ojjpression. 

Internal Policy. — Eor several years the country enjoyed 
remarkable prosperity. Popular instruction was dev<eloped, 
the penal code was ameliorated, and the lottery suppressed. 
Industry took a forward leap, by the introduction of ma- 
chines, and commerce increased. The coasts were provided 
with lighthouses, parish roads were improved, and the exe- 
cution of a vast system of railroads projected. But these 
enterprises, as too often happens, gave rise to unlimited 
stock-jobbing. 

Political Banquets. — The elections of 1846, carefully pre- 
pared and conducted by the administration, gave it a ma- 
jority. But it was becoming evident that in i\iQ pays legal, 
that is, in the small body of electors (220,000), the political 
sense was being lost, and calculation was taking the place 
of patriotism ; the electors sold their votes to the deputies ; 
the elected, their suffrage to the ministers ; and the repre- 
sentative institutions were vitiated at their source. The 
president of the Council, upheld by a factitious majority, 
assumed a haughty tone toward the opposition in Parlia- 
ment. He had, at the time of the elections, made many 
promises of reforms. The deputies of the left centre and of 
the dynastic left, directed by M. Thiers and M. Odilon 
Barrot, challenged him to fulfil his promises. They de- 
manded the revision of certain taxes, the electoral and par- 
liamentary reforms vainly proposed at each session since 



THE JULY MONARCHY. 643 

1842. The minister rejected these inoffensive claims ; the 
opposition replied by seventy banquets held in the most 
important cities, at which the grievances of the country 
were set forth. 

Paris belonged entirely to the opposition. A journal estab- 
lished by the Conservatives could not support itself. Even 
in that party itself disaffection showed itself. Several 
influential members of the majority went over to the op- 
position, and among the ministry itself several members 
objected to this extreme policy. But the presiding minister 
at the opening of the session of 1848 persisted in his irri- 
tating course. Exciting debates kept public opinion in a 
tumult for six weeks. External events, the victory of the 
Liberals in Switzerland, the movement in Italy, which was 
striving to escape from the oppression of Austria, reacted 
upon Erance. The opposition attempted a final demonstra- 
tion, — the banquet of the twelfth arrondissement of Paris. 

Revolution of the 24th of February, 1848. — The ministry 
prevented the meeting : immense crowds immediately gath- 
ered, and here and there disturbances broke out. On the 
evening of the 23d of February a Liberal ministry was 
appointed under the presidency of M. Thiers. But those 
who had commenced the movement found themselves unable 
to control it. The direction of the outbreak passed from 
their hands into those of experienced conspirators and 
veterans of the barricades, fighting men, who rushed into 
the crowd of the boulevards. To a shot fired upon the 
guard of the Eoreign Office, the troops answered by a volley 
which cut down fifty inoffensive bystanders. At the sight 
of their dead bodies borne through the streets, amid cries 
of vengeance, the people of the faubourgs flew to arms. 
Marshal Bugeaud, commanding the army, had already taken 
proper steps to repress the riot, when, in the night of the 
23d and 24th, he received from the new ministry the order 
to withdraw his troops to the Tuileries. Eather than obey 
tiiis senseless order, lie resigned his command, and the re- 
sistance was paralyzed. The national guard did nothing; 
the Eevolution followed. Abandoned by the Parisian bour- 
geoisie, Louis Philippe believed himself to be also abandoned 
by all France. At noon he abdicated and departed, pro- 
tected by a few regiments, without being followed or molested. 

The Duke of Orleans was dead, the Prince of Joinville 
and the Duke of Aumale absent. There were left, with the 



644 THE REPUBLIC OF 1848. 

Duke of Nemours, not a popular xDrince, and the young Duke 
of Montpensier, a woman and a child, the Duchess of 
Orleans and the Count of Paris. The duchess presented 
herself before the Chamber with the Count of Paris, but 
the insurgents followed her there and caused a provisional 
government to be proclaimed, composed of M. Dupont (de 
I'Eure), Arago, Lamartine, Cremieux, Ledru-EoUin and Gar- 
nier-Pagfes. Thus through the incapacity of the government 
and the audacity of a party, Prance had, instead of a reform 
regularly carried out by the public authorities, a new insur- 
rection which was to arrest work, destroy millions, shed 
blood; and interrupt the peaceful progress of the country. 



III. 

THE REPUBLIC OP 1848. 

The Provisional Government. — On the evening of the 
24tli the provisional government proclaimed the Republic. 
The provinces, resigning themselves as usual to the measures 
taken at the capital, appeared to accept the Eepublic. M. 
Ledru-EoUin everywhere replaced the prefects by commis- 
sioners charged with administering public affairs in the 
spirit of the new government; and to reassure Europe, 
Lamartine declared in a manifesto that the Eepublic threat- 
ened no one, but that she would everywhere prevent inter- 
vention for the repression of the legitimate claims of the 
peoples. Arago issued a decree emancipating the blacks in 
the colonies. 

Meanwhile industry and commerce were interrupted, the 
revenues of the State diminished, and the abolition of the 
salt-tax and a few other unpopular taxes diminished them 
still more. The minister of finances was therefore obliged 
to levy an extraordinary tax. Many manufactories had 
been closed, and thousands of workmen were left without 
food, and in a fit state to become the dupes of the prevalent 
communistic doctrines. The provisional government com- 
mitted the imprudence of guaranteeing them work, when it 
had neither work to be done nor monej^ to pay for it, and 
it authorized one of its members, M. Louis Blanc, to discuss 
the relations of labor and capital with delegations of labor- 
ing men. Finally, to occupy the working class, it establislved 



THE REPUBLIC OF 1848. 645 

national workshops, in wliich. dangerous idleness and dis- 
couraged honesty were thrown together. 

These excitements brought about a fresh contest. The 
national guard made an imposing demonstration in behalf 
of the bourgeoisie, the artisans a rival manifestation in favor 
of the proletariat. The provisional government was obliged 
every day to issue discourses and proclamations, to bring 
again into Paris a few battalions of the army, and to form 
an additional militia called the garde mobile. 

Opening of the National Assembly; the Executive Com- 
mittee. — After another socialistic manifestation, which was 
suppressed by the national guard (April), the electoral col- 
leges assembled on Sunday, April 22. The elections took 
place for the first time by universal suffrage. The electors 
were thus increased in nrunber from 220,000 to 9,000,000 ; 
an expansion for which nothing was prepared and which 
was certain to cause disturbances. On the 4th of ]\Iay the 
Constituent Assembly met, solemnly proclaimed the Eepub- 
lic, and unwisely confided authority to an executive com- 
mittee composed of five members, MM. Arago, Garnier-Pag^s, 
Marie, Lamartine, and Ledru-EoUin. It seemed that there 
was now nothing to be done but to draw up the constitution. 
But widely different views prevailed as to the nature of the 
revolution and the extent to which it should be carried. 

Outbreaks of May and June. — On the 15th of May, under 
pretext of carrying to the deputies a petition in favor of 
Poland, a movement took place against the Chamber. Lam- 
artine tried in vain to keep back the rioters by his eloquence ; 
as many as two thousand of them crowded into the hall of 
the Deputies. Blanqui summoned the Assembly to declare 
immediate war upon Europe for the deliverance of Poland. 
Barb^s demanded a tax of a thousand millions upon the 
rich. The j)resident was driven from his seat, and the 
Assembly declared dissolved. Fortunately a few battalions 
of militia came up and dispersed the insurgents ; the Assem- 
bly returned to its session. It soon after determined to 
abolish the national workshoi^s, which formed an army of 
one hundred thousand proletarians, having arms, leaders, 
and discipline. This news excited the anger of the agitators 
and the despair of the working class, deceived by false hopes. 
0\\ the 22d barricades were throAvn up with astonishing 
rapidity in the faubourgs and soon occupied half of Paris. 
The Executive Committee had at its disposal only twenty 



646 THE REPUBLIC OF 1848. 

tlioiisand soldiers of the line, the garde mobile, and a part 
of the national guard. With these troops, General Cavai- 
gnac occu]3ied all the principal avenues. A frightful bat- 
tle began in which legions of the national guard fought 
against other legions, in which the garde mobile, composed 
of men of the people, struggled with the workmen. The 
Assembly forced the Executive Committee to send in their 
resignations and appointed Gavaignac chief of the executive 
department. The struggle continued. The archbishop of 
Paris, Mgr. Affre, while attempting mediation, fell a martyr 
to his patriotic zeal. Finally, the insurrection was driven 
back into the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the insurgents 
surrendered. This battle of four days had cost the two 
parties five thousand killed, among whom were seven gen- 
erals and two representatives : four other generals and 
three representatives were wounded. Twelve thousand 
prisoners or persons arrested afterward were transported to 
Africa. 

The Eepublic was greatly weakened by this frightful 
struggle. The Assembly hastened to lay the basis of a 
new government with a single legislative assembly and an 
elective president. There were two prominent candidates 
for the presidency of the Republic, — General Gavaignac, 
chief, since June 24, of the executive department; and 
Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the Emperor. 
General Gavaignac, a man of noble character, received 1,448,- 
107 votes against 5,434,226 given for the prince (Decem- 
ber 10). 

Presidency of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. — Louis Napo- 
leon, born in 1808, the third son of Hortense de Beauhar- 
nais and Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland, had twice, in 
1836 and in 1840, attempted without success, at Strassburg 
and at Boulogne, to reawaken sympathy for the name of 
Napoleon and the glory of the Empire. After the second 
attempt he was condemned by the Court of Peers and shut 
up in the chateau of Ham, from which he escaped in 1846. 
The revolution of February revived his hopes. An active 
propaganda obtained for him many suffrages, and the' mis- 
takes of the Republicans and the magic of his name did the 
rest. His election to the presidency was a protest against 
the government which Paris had imposed on France on the 
24th of February. 

The new constitution was ill-suited to the times and the 



THE REPUBLIC OF 1848. 647 

circumstances under which it was produced. The execu- 
tive and the legislative had the same origin, because they 
both proceeded from universal suffrage, and because they 
were renewed, the one after three, the other after four years 
of exercise. But the President had this advantage, that, 
elected by millions of votes, he seemed to represent the en- 
tire nation. Antagonism between the two was inevitable. 
Moreover, the President had been given either too much 
power or too little ; and with the temptation to assume the 
usual prerogatives of public authority, he had been also 
given the means of success. The President and the Assem- 
bly, however, agreed upon the questions of establishing order 
and repressing the extreme parties. 

The European revolutions, born of the revolution of Feb- 
ruary, had been promptly suppressed by the kings. Aus- 
tria, victorious in Hungary, thanks to the Russians, had 
defeated Charles Albert, king of Sardinia, at Novara, and 
Lombardy had again fallen into her power. The republic 
proclaimed at Rome, after the flight of the Pope, vainly 
tried to defend itself. In order to prevent the establish- 
ment of Austrian domination throughout the peninsula, it 
was thought necessary for France, in intervening, to bring 
to an end the Roman Republic. The Prince-President and 
the Assembly sent a French army into Italy under the com- 
mand of General Oudinot. The Parisian Republicans tried, 
by an insurrection, to save the Roman Republic. But the 
outbreak was at once suppressed. General Oudinot entered 
Rome, after a brief siege, and restored the Pope. The Leg- 
islative Assembly, which succeeded the Constituent As- 
sembly, approved the conduct of the President, and the 
French troops remained at Rome for the protection of the 
Holy Father. 

The Legislative Assembly (1849-1851). — The new Assem- 
bly (May 28, 1849) numbered fewer Republicans and social- 
ists, and a much larger number of its members united under 
the general denomination of friends of order ; but many of 
these latter were in correspondence ivith the Bourbon or the 
Orleans princes. The session of 1850 was marked by a law 
which struck off three million electors, by requiring, for the 
obtaining of a ballot, the proof of an actual residence of 
three years in the electoral district. In that of 1851, irri- 
tating discussions took the place of the transaction of busi- 
ness. The powers of the President and those of the Assem- 



648 THE REPUBLIC OF 1848. 

bly were both to terminate in the following year, 1852, with 
an interval of three months, and universal suffrage, which 
had now become restricted suffrage, was to be called upon 
almost at the same time to renew the two chief authorities 
of the Republic. In the state of anxiety into which this 
doubtful future plunged the country, petitions which bore 
signatures numbering 1,500,000 were addressed to the As- 
sembly, praying for the revision of the constitution. But 
the Assembly was greatly divided. Many demanded that 
nothing fundamental should be changed ; some would con- 
sent to a revision of the article which forbade the re-elec- 
tion of the President ; others desired a complete revision 
which might open the way for the restoration of one or 
other of the three fallen monarchies. The necessary three- 
fourths vote could not be obtained. 

On the 4th of November, 1851, the President demanded 
the re-establisliment of universal suffrage. The Assembly, 
persisting in excluding from the ballot the nomadic or float- 
ing population, rejected the presidential proposition. On 
the following days irritating debates rendered the situation 
still more difficult ; a few spoke of imprisoning the Prince 
at Vincennes. But an assembly is always feeble in action. 
The Prince, on the other hand, had on his side the army, a 
part of the Parisian population, almost all France, tired of 
these disorders, and unity of command : he could therefore 
await an attack,, but he preferred to forestall it. 

The Coup d'Etat. — On the morning of December 2 the 
leaders of the different parties in the Assembly were ar- 
rested at their homes, and the palace of the Assembly was 
occupied by an armed force. At the same time a decree 
from the President declared the Assembly dissolved and 
universal suffrage re-established, and proposed to the people 
the outlines of a new constitution with a responsible head 
elected for ten years. Resistance was attempted in the 
centre of Paris and on the boulevards, but after a short 
struggle was suppressed. Vigorous measures promptly re- 
stored tranquillity. The people, by 7,437,216 affirmative 
votes against 640,737 negative, accepted the constitution 
proposed by the President, and gave him power for ten 
years. Thus frightened Prance gave herself to Louis Napo- 
leon, and the great current of 1789 was once more turned 
aside. During these sixty years, instead of advancing 
slowly and surely by regular progress, France had moved 



THE SECOND EMPIRE. 649 

by leaps and bounds, running in a few months from one ex- 
tremity of the political world to the other. 

The decennial presidency was only a journey towards the 
Empire. The new constitution, published in January, 1852, 
had borrowed its principles from the institutions of the Con- 
sulate and the Empire, and under the semblance of liberal- 
ity, concealed the omnipotence of the Prince. The head of 
the State was responsible, and governed by the aid of min- 
isters who depended on himself alone. Two assemblies were 
instituted : the Corps L^gislatif, an outgrowth of universal 
suffrage, had the power to vote laws and taxes ; a Senate, com- 
posed of the distinguished men of the country, was to watch 
over the preservation and development of the constitution. 
Councillors of State, appointed as were the Senators, by the 
Prince, prepared laws, defended them before the Corps 
L^gislatif, and examined the amendments. Before putting 
the constitution into effect, the President, clothed with the 
Dictatorship, remodelled the whole administration. The 
national ^lard was reorganized and placed at the disposal 
of the executive, the press again put under the jurisdiction 
of the correctionary tribunals, the government of the depart- 
ments concentrated in the hands of the prefects, the nomi- 
nation of the mayors restored to the government. Order 
being restored, labor resumed its activity. Carried away 
by the movement which had taken possession of it after the 
first vote in favor of Louis Napoleon in 1848, the nation 
hoped to find repose and order in the bosom of a hereditary 
monarchy. 



IV. 

THE SECOND EMPIRE. 
(1852-1870 A.D.) 

Re-establishment of the Empire (1852). — A senatus-con- 
sultum proposed to the people the re-establishment of the 
imperial dignity in the person of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, 
with heredity in his direct descent, legitimate or adoptive ; 
the people adopted this proposition on the 21st and 22d of 
November, by 7,839,552 affirmative votes against 254,501 
negatives, and the Empire was solemnly proclaimed on the 
2d of December, 1852. Thus the nation ratified the coup 



650 THE SECOND EMPIRE. 

d'etat of the 2d of December, 1851, as slie had ratified that 
of the 18th Brumaire, and voluntarily linked her destiny to 
that of the Napoleons. The new Emperor took the title of 
Napoleon III. Erom his marriage with Eugenie de Guzman, 
a Spanish countess, was born, in 1856, the Prince Imperial. 
The Empire was extremely popular ; the Emperor was not a 
roi faineant. He had two special aims : at home, to give 
satisfaction to the general needs of the country as well as 
to popular interests ; abroad, to improve the political situ- 
ation of France, which was still suffering from the great 
reverses of 1815. 

Benevolent Institutions. — The savings-bank system was 
extended, as were also the operations of mutual benefit socie- 
ties. Arrangements Avere made for bringing justice and 
medical relief more easily within the reach of the poor. 
Attention was given to the sanitary improvement of work- 
ingmen's dwellings. Three establishments were founded 
for convalescents discharged from the hospitals. ^ Working- 
men's pensions were proposed. 

Public Works ; Encouragements to Agriculture, Industry, 
and the Arts. — The government gave to public works an 
activity which, in ten years, almost renewed the great cities, 
but also overexcited speculation and led to disasters. Paris 
was almost rebuilt, on a magnificent plan, and well provided 
with sewers. Other cities followed the example. The 
Louvre was finished ; boulevards were cut through, old quar- 
ters made healthy, new ones called into existence, schools, 
mairies, and churches built in each arrondissement ; in the 
centre, the Halles constructed in an original style ; every- 
where gardens and promenades laid out; and at the two 
extremities of the city, the magnificent Bois de Boulogne 
and Bois de Vincennes. Eailroads, the construction of 
which had until then been carried on slowly, in a few years 
reached from the centre to the extremities, beside the new 
network of cross-lines. Immense works were also carried 
on in the construction of canals, roads, and ports, and the 
restoration of the churches. 

The organization of boards of agriculture, the establish- 
ment of agricultural prizes, contributed to spread the best 
methods among farmers and breeders. Special institutions 
for their benefit were founded. The renewal of forests on 
the mountains, the division and sale of common lands, were 
facilitated. A subvention of 100,000,000 was appropriated 



THE SECOND EMPIRE. 651 

to facilitate, by advances of money, the employment of sys- 
tems of draining, and portions of lands hitherto considered 
unfit for culture were reclaimed by this method. A law was 
prepared for the completion of parish roads, and elementary 
instruction in agriculture was required in the schools. 

Institutions of Credit ; Freedom of Trade. — The Crklit 
Fonder allowed the landed proprietors to raise their mort- 
gages more easily and to improve their property ; the Credit 
Mobilier caused credit to circulate more rapidly, too rapidly 
indeed, since failures resulted ; and the State in contracting 
loans instead of addressing itself solely to the bankers, 
invited all the citizens to take part in the operation by 
direct subscription. After the example of England, free 
trade was established : beginning in 1860, commercial trea- 
ties on the basis of free trade were signed with England, 
Belgium, Italy, Turkey, etc. Imprisonment for debt was 
abolished. In 1855, and again in 1867, universal exhibitions 
were held in Paris which stimulated industrial activity. 
To foster foreign commerce, new lines of steamships from 
the Atlantic ports to America, and from the Mediterranean 
ports to Asia, were established with government aid. In 
1862, as a result of these measures, the annual amount of 
importations and exportations had tripled in twelve years. 
The right of workmen to combine for the securing of higher 
wages was recognized by a law of 1864. Co-operative socie- 
ties were encouraged by one of 1867. Pauperism and crime 
were diminished. 

Education. — In fifteen years the number of children who 
received primary instruction was increased by a million ; 
school-houses were multiplied and the condition of the 
masters improved. Thirteen thousand school libraries were 
established. The education of girls was organized, and 
evening schools for adults established on a large scale. 
Technical schools were founded, and the Ecole des Hautes 
Etudes instituted for advanced scientific researches. 

Foreign Policy; Crimean War (1854-1856). — There 
were, during this reign, wars which the nation accepted 
as necessities of its old traditions of national policy and 
military honor. There were also, unfortunately, some of 
which she disapproved ; and the Second Em})ire fell on 
account of having undertaken one which was inevitable, but 
for which it was not prepared. 

Since the treaties of 1815 Russia had exercised a menac- 



652 THE SECOND EMPIRE. 

ing preponderance in Europe. The Czar Nicholas had 
become the personification of a formidable system of 
repression and conquest. He thought that the presence 
of a Napoleon on the throne of France would guarantee to 
Kussia the alliance of the English, and believed that the 
moment had arrived to seize the eternal object of Muscovite 
covetousness, — Constantinople. He assumed a protectorate 
over the Christian subjects of the Turkish Empire ; he ended 
by trying to have a secret understanding with England for 
the division of the spoils of the Sultan. In 1853 he sent 
forces to occupy the Danubian Principalities and armed at 
Sebastoj^ol a fleet which seemed formidable. The Emperor 
gave the first signal for resistance, drew England, which at 
first hesitated, into his alliance, and assured himself of the 
neiitrality of Austria and Prussia. The destruction by the 
Russians of a Turkish flotilla was the signal for the com- 
mencement of hostilities. The English and French fleet 
entered the Black Sea while an army forwarded from Great 
Britain and Prance assembled under the walls of Constanti- 
nople. In September, 1854, the allies, seventy thousand 
strong, landed on the shores of the Crimea, and the victory 
of the Alma enabled them to begin the siege of Sebastopol. 
That siege, the most terrible known in the annals of modern 
history, lasted almost a year. Continual battles were sus- 
tained, two victories, those of Inkerman and Traktir, won, 
and a struggle bravely maintained against a terrible climate 
and an enemy continually reinforced. Finally, in September, 
1855, French dash and English firmness received their reward. 
The city was taken, and some months after, the Emperor 
Nicholas died, foreseeing the ruin of his vast designs. 

The English and French fleet in the Baltic had destroyed 
Bomarsund, and in the Black Sea the French armored gun- 
boats, employed for the first time, had laid Southern Russia 
open ; an allied squadron had even taken Petropaulovsk on 
the Pacific Ocean. The Czar Alexander II. , the successor of 
Nicholas, asked for peace : it was concluded at Paris. This 
peace (March, 1856) neutralized the Black Sea, and conse- 
quently prevented Russia from having a fleet of war upon 
it ; took from her some parts of Bessarabia, opened the navi- 
gation of the Danube to its mouth, and gave security to the 
rights of neutrals during maritime wars. France recovered 
the plenitude of her influence in Europe. The visits of 
various sovereigns to the Emperor Napoleon III. were a 



THE SECOND EMPIRE. 653 

brilliant manifestation of the greatness which she had 
regained. But this glory was the sole advantage that she 
derived from the war. When her misfortunes came, the 
Russians remembered Sebastopol, and England forgot it. 

The Italian War ; Peace of Villafranca (1859) . — During 
the Crimean War the king of Sardinia had not feared to 
join his new army to the English and French trooj^s. This 
circumstance had made France the protector of Piedmont, 
and consequently of Italy, of which this little kingdom was 
the last citadel. Accordingly when the Emperor of Austria, 
Francis Joseph, in 1859 crossed the Ticino to attack Sar- 
dinia, the French Emperor hastened to assist the latter. 
The war lasted scarcely two months. After the brilli;uit 
affair of Montebello, the French and Piedmontese army con- 
centrated around Alessandria; then by a bold and skilful 
movement turned the right of the Austrians, and compelled 
them to recross the Ticino. Hemmed in between the army 
of General MacMahon and the guard at Magenta, the Aus- 
trians lost- seven thousand killed and wounded, and eight 
thousand prisoners (June 4). Two days after, the French 
regiments entered Milan, The enemy then abandoned their 
first line of defence, and fell back upon the Quadrilateral. 
Here they had one hundred and sixty thousand men, strongly 
placed, on ground carefully studied, near the village of Sol- 
ferino. Napoleon III. attacked them with one hundred and 
forty thousand and gained a complete victory (June 24). 

Italy was delivered, except that Venetia remained in the 
possession of Austria. The Emperor signed the peace of 
Villafranca, by which Austria abandoned Lombardy, which 
France ceded to Piedmont, and accepted the Mincio for her 
boundary in the peninsula, the different states of which 
were to form a confederation under the presidency of the 
Pope. But all the parties interested rejected this plan, and 
the revolutionary movement continued. All those govern- 
ments crumbled which, since 1814, had been only lieuten- 
ancies of Austria, and Italy was henceforth to form one 
kingdom, with the exception of Venice and Rome. As the 
price of the assistance he had rendered, the Emperor had 
Savoy and Nice ceded to him, which added three depart- 
ments to France, and extended her southern frontier to the 
ridge of the Alps. 

Expeditions and Wars outside of Europe. — In 1860 the 
massacre of the Christian Maronites by the Druses of Syria 



664 THE SECOND EMPIRE. 

again demonstrated the utter incapacity of the Ottoman 
Empire to protect its subjects. France had the honor to be 
commissioned by the great powers to send and maintain a 
body of troops in Syria to aid the Turkish government in 
punishing the criminals. M. de Lesseps, under the auspices 
of the French government, began at the Isthmus of Suez 
a canal which was to unite the Mediterranean and Ked Seas, 
and open direct communication between Europe and the 
extreme East. In 1860, also, France and England had been 
obliged to send an expedition against China, which had 
violated a treaty previously made with it. In less than 
six months the allied fleets transported fifteen thousand 
men and an immense supply of ammunition six thousand 
leagues from the French coast, to the banks of the Pei-ho. 
The mouths of the river were forced, the forts which de- 
fended them were captured after a vigorous and brilliant 
assault, and the Chinese defeated in the battle of Palikao. 
The allied armies entered Pekin to receive the ratification 
of the treaty, in virtue of which the Chinese government 
agreed to admit the English and French ambassadors into 
the capital, paid an indemnity of 120,000,000, opened the 
port of Tien-tsin, guaranteed advantageous commercial con- 
ditions to the conquerors, and restored to France the churches 
and cemeteries belonging to the Christians, The Celestial 
Empire was thrown open and, as a consequence, the Empire 
of Japan also. 

The French government profited by the presence of its 
forces in these regions to carry out an expedition against 
the empire of Annam, begun two years before, when France 
had taken possession of Saigon, and made it the capital of 
an establishment at the mouth of the great river Cambodia. 
Troops returning from China defeated the Annamites and 
imposed upon their emperor a peace which stipulated for 
consideration for the missionaries, an advantageous com- 
mercial treaty, and the possession of three provinces around 
the mouths of the Cambodia, in an extremely fertile coun- 
try, between the Indies and China, within reach of the 
Philippines and the Moluccas. 

France, England, and Spain had long had injuries to 
avenge and complaints to make against the anarchical gov- 
ernment of Mexico. At the beginning of the year 1862 the 
three powers agreed to act in unison, but soon the cabinets 
of London and Madrid renounced the enterprise. France 



THE SECOND EMPIRE. 655 

persisted. It became necessary to send, instead of the six 
thousand men who had first set out, as many as thirty-five 
thousand soldiers. Puebla, the key of Mexico, was captured 
after a heroic resistance, in May, 1863. A few days after 
(June 10), the French army entered Mexico, and the peo- 
ple, at the suggestion of France, proclaimed an Austrian 
prince, the Archduke Maximilian, Emperor. After the de- 
parture of the French troops, in 1867, the unfortunate prince 
was taken and shot by the Republicans. This imprudent 
and ill-conceived expedition was a great injury to French 
politics and French finances. 

Transformation of the Authoritative Empire into the Lib- 
eral Empire. — Great internal prosperity made the nation in 
general content. In the cities, it is true, the working class 
was continually agitated by social questions, and by remem- 
brances of the Republic; but the agricultural population 
asked only a continuation of order. The bourgeois class, 
enriched by an industry the extent of which was due to 
freedom of labor and trade, began to claim those liberties 
and securities which they had in 1852 sacrificed for the 
moment to the fear of civil disturbances. They wished for 
the suppression of ofiicial candidacies in order to release the 
country from tutelage ; and to secure a voluntary and honest 
expression of the national will, they demanded that, con- 
formably to the ideas of 1789, the State should be con- 
ducted like a great industrial society, with economy and 
prudence, and for the benefit, and by the action, only of 
those interested. 

In the present age a dictatorship can only be temporary. 
Napoleon III. knew it and had early declared that liberty 
should one day crown the neAv political edifice. In 1860 he 
associated the Corps Legislatif more directly with the policy 
of the government. In 1861 he renounced the right to de- 
cree extraordinary credits in the interval between the ses- 
sions. In 1867 he gave the ministers entrance to the Cham- 
l)ers, so that they could at any time give an account of their 
acts to the country. In 1868 he caused more liberal laws 
to be enacted respecting the press and the rights of public 
meeting. But the unfortunate issue of the expedition to 
Mexico, and the threatening position assumed in Germany 
by Prussia after her victory at Sadowa over the Austrians, 
and the advance of public spirit, favored by the general 
prosperity, brought about more earnest longings for liberty, 



656 THE SECOND EMPIRE. 

as was shown by the elections of 1869. Therefore the 
Emperor renounced his personal authority, and in April, 
1870, proposed to the French people the transformation of 
the authoritative Empire into a liberal Empire. On the 8th 
of May, 7,300,000 citizens answered yes to his proposition, 
against 1,500,000 who answered no. 

In order to make the organization of the country con- 
form to the new constitution, great reforms were necessary. 
France had long been excessively centralized. It was neces- 
sary to rest the institutions of the State upon broad com- 
munal and departmental institutions, and in some instances 
even provincial institutions. It was necessary furthermore 
to simplify and rejuvenate the central administration, to 
instruct and arm the people, to make citizens by the prac- 
tice of an austere liberty, and to make patriots by the 
national and moral education of the whole French people. 
But for all this, time and men were wanting. 

Approach of War with Prussia. — A great mistake had 
been made before Sadowa. Thinking that the unity of 
Germany was possible with and by the aid of Austria, the 
Emperor allowed that power to be crushed. In reality, the 
peril for France was not at Vienna, but at Berlin. Prussia, 
which since Frederick the Great had dreamed of recon- 
structing the Germanic Empire, knew well that she could 
attain that good fortune, so menacing to Europe, only after 
a military humiliation of France, and made preparations for 
the accomplishment of this end, with indefatigable persever- 
ance. German patriotism was excited against "the here- 
ditary enemy." She armed all her people from the age of 
twenty to sixty ; she required of her officers the most com- 
plete instruction, of her troops the strictest discipline, and 
by an organization which left no portion of her national 
forces inactive, by a foresight which utilized all the resources 
of industry and science, she constituted, in the centre of 
Europe, the most formidable machine of war that the Avorld 
had ever seen, — 1,500,000 trained and armed men ; every 
man a soldier. And this formidable machine she confided 
to men held back by no scruple where Prussian aggrandize- 
ment was concerned. 

France saw nothing, or wished to see nothing, of these 
immense preparations which were achieved even on her own 
territory by the minute and secret study of all her means 
of action or resistance. Ideas of economy dominated the 



THE GERMAN WAR. 657 

Corps L^gislatif; a blind confidence in her military supe- 
riority hindered her from proportioning her forces to the 
greatness of the approaching struggle, and through the in- 
capacity of men, and the insufficiency of the administrative 
system, those at hand were ill-employed. 



CONTINUATION. 

THE GERMAN WAR AND THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 
(1870-1889 A.D.) 

Origin of the War with Germany. — Ever since Sadowa, 
the relations between France and the North German Con- 
federation then formed had been strained. In 1867 the at- 
tempt of the French Emperor to obtain possession of Lux- 
emburg by purchase from its grand-duke, the king of the 
Netherlands, was foiled by the opposition of Prussia; but 
war was for the time averted. But Napoleon was surrounded 
by influences hostile to the maintenance of peace with 
Prussia, and was also urged towards war by considerations 
of the' internal politics of Prance. Towards the end of 
May, 1870, the Duke of Gramont, a bitter opponent of 
Prussia, was made minister of foreign affairs. The actual 
occasion of the outbreak of war between the two rival pow- 
ers was a proposition respecting the throne of Spain, which 
had now been vacant since 1868. In the beginning of July 
the Spanish ministers announced their intention to recom- 
mend to the throne Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigma- 
ringen, a Catholic German prince remotely related to the 
Hohenzollerns of the royal family of Prussia. Gramont 
protested to King William, through the French ambassador, 
Benedetti. The king disclaimed all responsibility. At the 
same time Prince Leopold declined the proffered crown. 
Benedetti was instructed to demand from the Prussian king 
an assurance that the candidacy should not be renewed. 
The king refused, declined to hold further intercourse with 
Benedetti, and recalled his own ambassador from Paris. 
On July 19 the French government declared war. 

Beginning of the War ; Weissenburg to Sedan. — Both 
governments began pushing forward troops .into the narrow 
space of eighty miles between Luxemburg and the Rhine. 



658 THE GERMAN WAR AND 

It was the Emperor's plan to gather one hundred thousand 
men at Strassburg, his main army of one hundred and fifty 
thousand at Metz, retaining a reserve of fifty thousand at 
Chdlons, and, with the two hundred and fifty thousand men 
thus concentrated on the frontier, to cross the Rhine op- 
posite Carlsruhe. Then he proposed to push in between 
North Germany and the South German states, expecting 
the latter to join him against Prussia. But his preparations 
for war were most incomplete, especially in comparison with 
those of the Germans. By August 2 the latter had four 
hundred and fifty thousand men gathered in the space be- 
tween Trier and Landau; the South Germans enthusias- 
tically joined in the war. On the 4th and 6th the left wing 
of the German army, under the crown prince of Prussia, 
attacked and defeated portions of Marshal MacMahon's army 
at Weissenburg and Worth, and forced him to retreat. At 
the same time the French left was driven back at Spicheren. 
The German armies now made a general advance into 
France. The main army of the French, under Bazaine, 
retreated to Metz, and attempted to cross the Moselle at 
that point in order to retire upon Chalons. But the German 
forces overtook them and, by the terrible battles at Mars- 
la-Tour, Vionville, and Gravelotte, fought before Metz on 
August 16 and 18, cut off their retreat westward from 
that city. At Gravelotte the Germans lost twenty thousand 
killed and wounded ; the .French lost twelve thousand, and 
were shut up in Metz. Three days later Marshal MacMahon, 
accompanied by the Emperor, set out from ChMons with one 
hundred and fifty thousand men, and marched northeast- 
ward toward the Meuse. His plan was to cross that river 
at Stenay, and then, approaching Metz from the north, to 
release Bazaine. But the Germans, learning of his design, 
sent two armies down the Meuse, which anticipated him, 
secured Stenay, prevented his advance to Metz, cut off his 
retreat to Paris, and hemmed him in at Sedan, near the 
Belgian frontier. Here, on the first of September, a great 
and memorable battle occurred, in which the French were 
entirely defeated, failing in all efforts to break through the 
German lines. On the 2d the Emperor surrendered, with 
all his army. Three thousand had been killed and fourteen 
thousand wounded in the battle; one hundred and four 
thousand prisoners fell into the hands of the Germans as 
the result of the battle and the capitulation. Napoleon was 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 659 

given the palace of Wilhelmsholie, near Cassel, as a residence 
during liis captivity. 

Establishment of the Republic ; Sieges of Strassburg, Metz, 
and Paris. — When the news of the disaster of Sedan reached 
Paris, the lower house, in a tumultuary assembly, deposed 
the Emperor and proclaimed France a republic, September 
4. A provisional government was set up called the Gov- 
ernment of National Defence, and consisting of eleven 
members, of whom the most noted were MM. Favre, Gam- 
betta, Simon, Ferry, and Eochefort. General Trochu was 
made president and governor-general of Paris. MM. Favre 
and Thiers vainly attempted to negotiate with the Germans, 
who on the 19th arrived before Paris with one hundred and 
fifty thousand men. A month later the forces amounted to 
two hundred and fifty thousand. The wide circuit of the 
fortifications of the city was defended by four hundred 
thousand men, of whom only a small part were regular or 
highly disciplined troops. Sorties were made, but repulsed. 
Gambetta, escaping from Paris, actively organized armies 
for the relief of the city. One of these advanced from the 
Loire in October and November, but was repulsed. Mean- 
while Strassburg had been forced to surrender at the end of 
September, with its garrison of nearly eighteen thousand, 
and at the end of October Bazaine surrendered Metz, with 
his great army of one hundred and seventy-nine thousand. 
This released two hundred thousand Germans troops, its 
besiegers, who thereupon marched toward Paris. 

Defeat of the Armies of Relief. — The organization of 
forces for the relief of the capital was pushed with such 
energy that by the end of the year there were probably a 
million Frenchmen in arms. But most of these were im- 
perfectly trained. The repulse of the army of the Loire, 
already mentioned, led to the occupation of Orleans by the 
Germans on December 5. In the north, Rouen was occu- 
pied on the same day. 

Gommimication between the city and the relieving armies 
was kept up by various ingenious means, and the advances 
of the latter were accompanied by sorties on the part 
of the former. The army of the North, under General 
Faidherbe, was destroyed after much obstinate fighting. 
The army of the Loire, compelled to retreat after a four 
days' battle at Beaugency under General Chanzy, was di- 
vided. A part was joined with the army of the West, under 



660 THE GERMAN WAR AND 

Chanzy's command. This army was routed at Le Mans 
on January 11 and 12, 1871, by Prince Frederick Charles of 
Prussia, and having also suffered intensely from hunger and 
cold, for the winter Avas a very severe one, was unable to 
engage in further operations of any importance. The re- 
mainder of the army of the Loire had been joined to the 
army of the East, under Bourbaki, who was ordered by 
Gambetta to march eastward and relieve Belfort, and then, 
turning northward, to free Alsace and Lorraine from the 
Germans, cut off the communications between the besiegers 
of Paris and their own country, cross the Ehine, and invade 
South Germany. Werder, strongly intrenched behind the 
Lisaine, sustained a three days' attack from Bourbaki (Jan- 
uary 15-18), who was then driven southward by Manteuffel. 
The retreat of this army was cut off, and it was compelled, 
to the number of ninety thousand men, to pass over the 
frontier into Switzerland, where it was disarmed (Pebruary 
1). Another force in the southeast, under the Italian lib- 
erator Garibaldi, was compelled to remain inactive. 

Capitulation of Paris ; Conclusion of Peace. — Meanwhile 
the army besieging Paris, under the command of King Wil- 
liam, with Count von Moltke as his chief military adviser, 
had, on December 27, begun the bombardment of Paris. 
A desperate attempt to break through the besieging army 
on January 19 was defeated. The city had now been 
under siege for four months ; it had endured great sufferings 
and privations, and its stores of provisions were almost 
exhausted. Negotiations were entered into, and on Janu- 
ary 28 an armistice for three weeks was signed, during 
which a National Assembly was to meet to decide whether 
peace should be signed on the terms offered by the Germans. 
Bourbaki's army, then near its destruction, was not included 
in the armistice. Paris was to pay a war contribution of 
200,000,000 fr. within a fortnight. 

The elections to the National Assembly resulted in the 
choice of a body mostly belonging to the conservative par- 
ties. It met at Bordeaux on February 13. The Govern- 
ment of National Defence resigned its powers to the 
Assembly, which elected M. Thiers head of the executive 
department. On the 26th, to which date the armistice had 
been prolonged, he and two of his ministers signed prelim- 
inaries of peace with the Germans, which were ratified by 
the National Assembly on March 1. These preliminaries 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC. CGI 

provided that France should cede to Germany Alsace, 
excepting Belfort, and that portion of Lorraine in which 
German is spoken, Metz and Thionville being included, — 
a cession of 5500 square miles of territory, with a population 
of 1,500,000 ; that she should pay the sum of five milliards 
(billions) of francs, one milliard in 1871, and the rest within 
three years ; and that German troops should occupy parts of 
her soil until the whole was- paid. The definitive treaty, 
signed at Frankfort on May lO by M. Favre and Prince 
Bismarck, did not greatly differ from these preliminaries. 
During the war the South German states had joined them- 
selves to the North German Confederation, and on January 
18 the German Empire had been formally proclaimed at 
Versailles with the king of Prussia as Emperor. 

The Commune. — The National Assembly removed from 
Bordeaux to Versailles. Already, however, a dangerous 
internal enemy had appeared in Paris. The extreme or 
Red Republicans had twice during the siege broken out in 
insurrection. They now, in wild excitement, seized posses- 
sion of a large number of cannon, fortified the heights of 
Montmartre and Chaumont on the north and northeast 
parts of Paris, and then occupied the H6tel de Ville and 
obtained control of the city. These movements were under- 
taken under the authority of a Central Committee of the 
national guard. The ideas lying at the basis of this insur- 
rection were not simply the old revolutionary ideas of 
political equality, but also those more modern ideas of social 
equality which fanatical socialists, aiming at the abolition 
of religion, marriage, inheritance, and individual property 
in land, had propagated through the "International Work- 
ingmen's Association." With these were joined certain 
extreme notions of local self-government or the independ- 
ence of communes. The Central Committee ordered the 
election of a Commune of Paris on March 26 ; a body of 
Radicals was chosen and installed as the government of Paris. 
It organized in committees, each presiding over one of the 
departments of government, passed much revolutionary 
legislation, and prepared to hold the city against the 
National Assembly and the Versailles government. 

M. Thiers' government delayed decisive measures until, 
by return of prisoners from Germany, a sufficient force of 
regular troops was at hand. Hostilities between the Ver- 
sailles troops and the insurgents began on the 2d of April. 



662 THE GERMAN WAR AND 

On the next day a sortie from Paris toward Versailles was 
repulsed. Marshal MacMahon was given the command of 
the Assembly's troops, the investment was made complete, 
and by the middle of May the southwestern forts were in 
possession of the besiegers. Within the city, meantime, all 
was in a state of rapid disorganization. Jealousy and dis- 
trust prevailed within the Commune and the Central Com- 
mittee. Frequent changes of j^jOmmanders resulted, each in 
turn being removed or resignitig on finding it impossible to 
maintain his authority. Confiscation within and the pres- 
sure from without increased the disaffection of the inhabi- 
tants toward the insurrectionary government. 

Finally, on May 21, 'JaQ government troops entered the 
capital. The insurgents, driven back, shot a large number 
of prisoners held as hostages, conspicuous among whom was 
Mgr. Darboy, archbishop of Paris, drenched the chief public 
buildings with petroleum and set fire to them. The greater 
part of the Tuileries, the Library of the Louvre, a portion 
of the Palais Royal, the H6tel de Ville, a part of the Lux- 
embourg, and many other public buildings were destroyed. 
After an obstinate and savage conflict the insurrection was 
completely stifled. Severe military executions accompanied 
the suppression of the revolt, members of the Commune in 
particular being shot whenever captured. During the week's 
fighting ten thousand insurgents were killed. 

The Assembly and M. Thiers. — A majority of the National 
Assembly belonged to one or another of the Conservative 
groups. Of these one, called the Legitimist party, desired 
that the direct line of the Bourbons should be called to the 
throne of France in the person of the Count of Chambord, 
the grandson of Charles X., called by his party Henry V. 
Another, the party of the Orleanists, desired the restoration 
of the limited or July monarchy in the person of the Count 
of Paris, grandson of Louis Philippe, or of the latter's son, 
the Duke of Aumale. There was also a group of Bonapart- 
ists, whose candidate was the young Prince Imperial. M. 
Thiers, personally inclined to constitutional monarchy, 
considered himself bound to uphold the Republic. The 
Count of Chambord returned to France, but issued a mani- 
festo so uncompromisingly royalist as to make difficult his 
candidacy. The Orleanist princes were also allowed to 
return to France and eventually were permitted to take their 
seats in the Assembly to which they had been elected. 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 663 

The Assembly frequently found itself in conflict with M. 
Thiers. Yet in the present divided state of parties he was felt 
to be indispensable, as the only possible executive. At the 
end of August he was accorded the title of President of the 
Kepublic for as long a time as the present Assembly should 
last. Although the framing of an entire new constitution 
was deferred, an important measure dealing with the govern- 
ment of departments was passed : it provided for the elec- 
tion, in each department, of a conseil general or local legisla- 
ture, and was thus a measure of decentralization, abridging 
the powers of the prefects appointed from Paris. In the 
ensuing spring the council of state was again called into 
existence. 

The Milliards; Reorganization of the Army. — Both M. 
Thiers and the Assembly united in desiring to pay to Ger- 
many as soon as possible the stipulated indemnity, and rid 
the French soil of the demoralizing presence of the army of 
occupation. When, in 1876, subscriptions were invited for 
a loan of two and a half milliards for this purpose, seven 
and a half milliards were subscribed ; while toward the loan 
of three and a half milliards in 1872, subscriptions to the 
amount of forty-three milliards were received. This not only 
demonstrated the confidence which French and foreign capi- 
talists, in spite of the recent disasters, had in the future of 
France, but enabled the German evacuation to take place 
before the appointed term : the last German soldier crossed 
the frontier in September, 1873. 

While thus paying for its military reverses, France was 
determined that they should not occur again. After ani- 
mated debates, a bill for the reorganization of the army was 
passed in July, 1872. It provided for universal military 
service during a period of five years as the maximum, but 
of a considerably less extent in many cases. Trials of com- 
munists went on during 1872, and at the end of 1873, 
a court-martial condemned Marshal Bazaine to death for 
the surrender of Metz ; but the sentence was commuted to 
imprisonment. 

Constitutional Questions ; Fall of M. Thiers. — The death 
of Napoleon III., at Chiselhurst, in England, in January, 
1873, seriously weakened the Bonapartist cause. Mean- 
while, however, movements towards a more definitive settle- 
ment of the constitution, which had occupied a great por- 
tion of the year 1872, were continued. Though the less 



664 THE GERMAN WAR AND 

conservative Eepublican members, under the leadership of 
Gambetta, maintained that the Assembly had no authority 
to frame a constitution, not having been elected for that 
purpose, the principal struggles were between M. Thiers 
and the majority of the Assembly, consisting of the three 
sections of the Sight, or monarchical party. The aged 
president endeavored with much skill to maintain the 
power of the executive and, with that end in view, to se- 
cure the establishment of a second Chamber. The Eight 
strove to limit the president's right of participation in 
debate, which, in the hands of so eloquent a speaker and so 
skilful a parliamentarian as M. Thiers, was a formidable 
power, v/hich they oppoped the more strenuously as they saw 
him gradually inclining to advocate the Eepublic as the defin- 
itive form of government for France. Finally, on May 24, 
1873, after prolonged conflict, the Assembly passed a vote 
adverse to M. Thiers and his ministry. He resigned his 
office, and on the same day Marshal MacMahon was chosen 
by the Assembly to succeed him as president. 

Marshal MacMahon and the Septennate. — Marshal Mac- 
Mahon was an elderly soldier, who had given little attention 
to politics, but was regarded as an honest and trustworthy 
man. A conservative ministry was formed under the Duke 
of Broglie, and many reactionary steps were taken. The 
Count of Chambord was visited at his residence at Frohs- 
dorf, in Austria, by the Count of Paris, and by some leading 
members of the Orleanist Eight, and hopes were for some 
time entertained that he would so far accommodate himself 
to ideas of constitutional monarchy as to enable the two 
Eoyalist parties to unite, and perhaps to unite successfully, 
in support of his candidacy for the throne. But at length 
the count, by declaring that if he accepted the monarchy it 
would be his duty to take it without compromises or condi- 
tions, with devotion to the Papacy, and under the white 
flag of the old Bourbon monarchy, frustrated these attempts 
at union. Marshal MacMahon now demanding an exten- 
sion of powers, in the interests of good order and stability 
of government, the majority voted him possession of the 
presidency for a term of seven years (November, 1873). 
The control of the central government over the mayors of 
communes was made more complete. The Broglie ministry 
set about the preparation of a constitution for France, but in 
May, 1874, succumbed to the difficulties of the political sit- 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 665 

nation. These difficulties arose mainly from tlie continued 
postponement of the fundamental question, whether the 
ultimate form of government in France was to be that of a 
republic or that of a monarchy. This gave a provisional 
character to the government of the Marshal-President, in 
the face of mutually hostile parties which were constantly 
manoeuvring for partisan advantage. 

The Constitution of 1875. — After prolonged struggles and 
exciting discussions, a vote favorable to the definitive estab- 
lishment of the Eepublic was passed by one majority on the 
30th of January. This principle once established, a perma- 
nent constitution for France was framed, not in one docu- 
ment, as in the United States, but in the form of a series 
of laws passed at intervals during the year 1875. The out- 
lines of the constitution thus constructed, were as follows. 
Legislative power was to be exercised by two assemblies, 
the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate was 
to consist of three hundred members, each forty years old. 
Of these, two hundred and twenty-five were to be elected 
by the departments, the electoral body in each department 
consisting of its deputies, its conseil general, its conseils 
d'arrondissement, and delegates elected by each commune. 
These senators were to have a term of nine years, one-third 
retiring by rotation every three years. The remaining 
seventy-five were to be chosen for life by the existing 
National Assembly ; future vacancies in their number wore 
to be filled by the Senate itself. The Chamber of Deputies 
was to consist of members chosen by universal suffrage, 
under the arrangement called the scrutin d'arrondissement, 
as opposed to the scrutin de liste. The latter plan was one 
in accordance with which, each department having a num- 
ber of deputies proportioned to its population, each voter 
in the department was to vote for the whole number, on 
a general ticket. By the plan adopted, each arrondissement 
was entitled to one deputy, and if its population exceeded 
one himdred thousand, to two or more, but with division 
into single-member districts. Each voter thus voted for but 
one candidate. The executive government was to be in the 
hands of a President, chosen for seven years by the Senate 
and Chamber of Deputies united in a single body called the 
National Assembly. He was to be re-eligible, to have the 
initiative of legislation concurrently with the two chambers, 
to execute the laws, to dispose of the armed forces, and to 



666 THE GERMAN WAR AND 

appoint to all civil and military offices. With, the assent 
of the Senate, he might dissolve the Chamber of Deputies 
before the conclusion of its four years' term. He was 
to have a responsible ministry. In general, his position 
resembled that of a constitutional monarch, with other 
resemblances to that of the President of the United States. 
Amendments of the constitutional laws could, under certain 
forms, be effected by the two chambers united in National 
Assembly. The seventy-five senators chosen by the existing 
assembly were mostly eminent members of the Left. The 
last day of the year 1875 saw a final prorogation of this 
monarchist assembly which had established the Eepublic. 
It had been in existence nearly five years. The elections 
to the Senate gave a small majority to the Republicans. 
Those to the Chamber of Dex^uties (February, 1876) gave 
about two-thirds of its five hundred and thirty-two seats to 
Republicans, mostly moderate Republicans. 

Ministry of M. Dufaure. — The ministry to which the 
leadership of this assembly was soon confided, was therefore 
naturally a ministry of moderate Republicans. M. Dufaure 
was prime minister, and M. Ldon Say minister of finance. 
The latter, a distinguished economist and financier, ad- 
dressed himself to the task of promoting order and economy 
in the national finances. The general spirit in which they 
have since been managed has not been marked by the same 
degree of sobriety and caution. The long period which 
elapses before the publication of the definitive accounts of 
a given year, the frequency of the introduction of supple- 
mentary estimates after the passage of the annual budget, 
and the facility with which additional loans have been re- 
solved upon, have not tended toward either economy or sys- 
tem. The result is that deficits occur each year, and that 
in the middle of the year 1889 the debt of France is much 
the largest in Europe, probably amounting, all things in- 
cluded, to not less than 40,000,000,000 francs, or about 
$8,000,000,000, which is more than twice as great as that 
of the United Kingdom, the next largest of the public debts 
of the world. 

The Dufaure ministry was not long-lived, being succeeded 
before the year 1876 closed, by a ministry led by M. Jules 
Simon, a distinguished orator and writer. The tenure of 
French cabinets in general has been so little permanent 
under the Third Republic, that in the nineteen years which 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 667 

have elapsed since the fall of the Empire, twenty-five cabi- 
nets have had charge of the executive government. The 
chambers have not been divided, as has been usual during 
the period of cabinet government in England, between two 
clearly defined political parties, so that changes of cabinet 
consist in the substitution of an executive committee drawn 
from one party, for an executive committee made up of its 
opponents. In the French chambers, on the contrary, 
although Monarchists and Republicans have stood opposed 
in most matters, the most significant divisions have been into 
groups or factions, representing successive shades of opinion 
from the extreme Right to the extreme Left ; and successive 
cabinets have differed from each other by shades, cabinet 
crises often bringing about a modification of the composition 
of the ministry rather than a complete change. Nearly all 
cabinets have been Republican, now approaching the Right 
Centre, now shifting further to the Left. 

It will not be necessary to take up the history of each of 
these cabinets. That of M. Dufaure was much occupied 
with the question of amnesty for persons engaged in the 
insurrection of the Commune, with questions respecting the 
privileges of Catholic universities, etc. 

The President's Appeal to the Country. — Few events had 
marked the history of the Simon ministry when, suddenly, 
in May, 1877, the President of the Republic demanded its 
resignation. Much influenced of late by Monarchist ad- 
visers, he had concluded that the moderate Republican cab- 
inets did not possess the confidence of the chambers, and, 
feeling that the responsibility of maintaining the repose and 
security of France rested upon him, had resolved, rather 
than allow the management of the affairs of the country to 
fall into the hands of M. Gambetta and the Radicals, to ap- 
point a ministry of conservatives, trusting that the country 
would ratify the step. 

A ministry was organized under the Duke of Broglie, and 
the Chamber of Deputies was first prorogued, and then, 
with the consent of the Senate, dissolved. The death of M. 
Thiers in September caused a great national demonstration 
in honor of that patriotic statesman, "the liberator of the 
territory." The result of the ensuing elections was a com- 
plete victory for the Republicans, who secured nearly three- 
fourths of the seats in the new Chamber. The Marshal, 
appointing a ministry composed of adherents of his policy 



668 THE GERMAN WAR AND 

wlio were not members of the Assembly, attempted to make 
head against the majority, but was forced in December to 
yield to the will of the people and of their representatives, 
and to recall M. Dnfaure and the moderate Eepublicans to 
ofi&ce. The year 1878 therefore passed off quietly, being 
especially distinguished by the great success of the universal 
exhibition held at Paris under the auspices of the govern- 
ment, and by the successful participation of the latter in the 
negotiations of the Congress of Berlin. France was able to 
pursue on that occasion a policy of disinterestedness and 
mediation ; M. Waddington, its representative, exercising an 
especial care for the interests of G-reece. 

Resignation of Marshal MacMahon. — At the beginning 
of 1879 elections were held in pursuance of the provisions 
of the constitution, for the renewal of a portion of the Sen- 
ate. That body being considerably more conservative than 
t\\Q Chamber of Deputies, Republicans had looked forward 
to these elections with much anticipation, meanwhile waiting 
with patience, under the counsels of M. Gambetta, who had 
grown increasingly moderate in policy. Elections were held 
for the filling of eighty-two seats. Of these the Eepubli- 
cans won sixty-six, the Monarchist groups sixteen. This 
was a loss of forty-two seats on the part of the latter, and 
assured to the Eepublicans a full control of the Seuate. It 
had also the effect of definitively establishing the Republic 
as the permanent government of France. The Republican 
leaders therefore resolved to insist upon extensive changes 
in the personnel of the Council of State and the judiciary 
body, both of which, in spite of all the changes of recent 
years, still remained principally composed of members of 
the reactionary parties. When they also proposed to make 
extensive changes in other departments, Marshal MacMahon, 
who foresaw the impossibility of maintaining harmonious 
relations with the cabinets which the Republican majority 
would now demand, took these new measures as a pretext, 
and, on January 30, 1879, resigned the office of President 
of the Republic. On the same day the Senate and Chamber, 
united in ISTational Assembly, elected as his successor, for 
the constitutional term of seven years, M. Jules Gr6vy, pres- 
ident of the Chamber of Deputies, a moderate Republican 
who enjoyed general respect. M. Grevy was seventy-one 
years old. M. Gambetta was chosen to succeed him as pres- 
ident of the Chamber. The cabinet was remodelled, M. 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 669 

Dufaure resigning his office and being succeeded by M. 
Waddington. 

M. Ferry's Education Bill. — In the reorganized ministry 
one of the most prominent of the new members was M. Jules 
Ferry, its minister of education. He soon brought forward 
two measures which excited violent discussion : the one deal- 
ing with the regulation of superior education, the other with 
the constitution of the Supreme Council of Public Instruc- 
tion. The object of the latter was to exclude from the 
Council the ecclesiastical element. The former, also in- 
tended to put education beyond ecclesiastical control, con- 
fined academic degrees to candidates from State universities, 
and prohibited the use of the title university or faculty by 
any but State institutions ; its famous Clause 7 also pro- 
vided that no person should be allowed to direct a public or 
private educational establishment of any kind, or to teach 
therein, if he belonged to a non-authorized religious commu- 
nity. This provision was directed especially against the 
Jesuits and their twenty-seven colleges; but twenty-six 
other communities woiild be affected, and an aggregate of 
nearly two thousand teachers. 

The former of these bills passed through both houses, as 
did a measure for the reform of the Council of State. But 
Clause 7 of the bill respecting universities excited vigorous 
and extensive opposition. The bill passed the Chamber, 
but was delayed in the Senate vintil the new session, when 
(November 27, 1879) the chambers reassembled, not at 
Versailles, but at Paris. Another change in the aspect 
of affairs resulted from the death in Zululand of the 
young Prince Louis, son and heir of Napoleon III. This 
event weakened the hopes of the Bonapartists, and later 
divided their suffrages between two candidates, — Prince 
Napoleon, son of Jerome Bonaparte, and Prince Victor, son 
of Prince Napoleon. In March, 1880, the Senate rejected the 
bill respecting universities. The ministry, now composed 
of members of the "pure Left" (instead of a mixture of 
these and the Left Centre) under M. de Freycinet, resolved 
to enforce the existing laws against non-authorized congre- 
gations. The Jesuits were warned to close their establish- 
ments ; the others, to apply for authorization. Failing to 
carry out these decrees, M. de Freycinet was forced to' re- 
sign, and was succeeded as prime minister by M. Ferry, 
under whose orders the decrees were executed in October 



670 ■ THE GERMAN WAR AND 

and November, establishments of the Jesuits and others, to 
the number of nearly three hundred, being forcibly closed 
and their inmates dispersed. Laws were also passed in the 
same year and in 1881 for the extension of public education, 
and a general amnesty proclaimed for persons engaged in 
the insurrection of the commune. 

Tunisian Expedition; Elections of 1881. — In April and 
May, 1881, on pretext of chastising tribes on the Tunisian 
frontier of Algeria, who had committed depredations on the 
Prench territories in Northern Africa, a military force from 
Algeria entered Tunis, occupied the capital, and forced the 
Bey to sign a treaty by which he put himself and his 
country under the protectorate of France. The French 
were given the right to maintain a military occupation of 
the country, to manage its foreign relations and its finances, 
and virtually to govern it for the Bey, at the same time 
agreeing to maintain existing treaties with foreign powers. 
These results of the expedition were received without pro- 
test by most of the ^jowers ; the Porte, however, asserted 
suzerainty over the province, and Italy was profoundly 
incensed, and perhaps permanently alienated from the 
Eepublic. 

It was ardently desired by M. Gambetta, now the recog- 
nized leader of the Republicans, that the impending elec- 
tions for the Chamber of Deputies, whose fours years' term 
was now expiring, should take place, not by the scrutin 
d^ arrondissement, but by the scrutin de liste, i.e. on a gen- 
eral ticket for each department; but this proposition was 
rejected by the Senate. The elections, in August, resulted 
in a Chamber composed of 467 Bepublicans, 47 Bonapartists, 
and 43 Royalists, whereas its predecessor had consisted of 
387 Republicans, 81 Bonapartists, and 61 Royalists. In 
response to a general demand, M. Gambetta became prime 
minister on the meeting of the new Assembly in the autumn, 
with a cabinet composed mostly of men somewhat obscure, 
among whom the most conspicuous was M. Paul Bert, ap- 
pointed minister of education and worship, whose appoint- 
ment to that position scandalized a large portion of the 
nation, because of his well-known anti-religious sentiments. 

To the disappointment occasioned by the composition of 
M. Gambetta's cabinet was soon added a disappointment 
at its failure to achieve the great things which had been 
expected of that statesman. He put forward an elaborate 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 671 

programme of constitutional revision, including the introduc- 
tion of election to the Chamber by scrutin de liste, of elec- 
tion of all senators for nine years, none for life, and of a 
representation of communes proportional to their popula- 
tion, in the bodies choosing senators. But his measures 
failed to receive the support of the Chamber, and he was 
forced to resign after having held the office of prime minis- 
ter but two months and a half (January, 1882). On the 
last day of that year M. Gambetta, still the most eminent 
French statesman of the time, died at Paris, aged forty-four. 

Egyptian Affairs; the Princes. — The Khedive of Egypt 
had in 1879 entrusted the supervision of the financial admin- 
istration of his country to two controllers, appointed by Eng- 
land and France respectively, in the interests of the citizens 
of those countries who were holders of Egyptian bonds. 
Difficulties arising in 1882 between the Khedive and his 
council, led by Arabi Pasha, England and France deter- 
mined to intervene in behalf of the threatened interests of 
their subjects in that country. But after many negotiations 
among the powers of Europe, the military intervention was 
carried out by England alone, and France was obliged not 
only to remain aloof, but to submit to the abolition of the 
Dual Control. 

The death of Gambetta aroused the Monarchists to re- 
newed activity. Prince Napoleon issued a violent mani- 
festo, and was arrested. Bills were brought in which were 
designed to exclude from the soil of France and of French 
possessions all members of houses formerly reigning in 
France. Finally, however, after a prolonged contest, a 
decree suspending the dukes of Aumale, Chartres, and 
Alengon from their functions in the army was signed by 
the President. Some months later, August, 1883, the Count 
of Chambord ("Henry V.") died at Frohsdorf; by this 
event the elder branch of the house of Bourbon became 
extinct, and the claims urged by both Legitimists and Or- 
leanists were united in the person of the Count of Paris. 

Madagascar and Tonquin. — During the year 1882 alleged 
encroachments upon French privileges and interests in the 
northwestern portion of Madagascar had embroiled France 
in conflict with the Hovas, the leading tribe of that island. 
The French admiral commanding the squadron in the In- 
dian Ocean demanded in 1883 the placing of the north- 
western part of the island under a French protectorate, and 



672 THE GERMAN WAR AND 

the payment of a large indemnity. These terms being re- 
fused by the queen of the Hovas, Tamatave was bombarded 
and occupied, and desultory operations continued until the 
summer of 1883, when an expedition of the Hovas resulted 
in a signal defeat of the French. A treaty was then nego- 
tiated, in accordance with which the foreign relations of the 
island were put under the control of France, while the 
queen of Madagascar retained the control of internal affairs 
and paid certain claims. 

A treaty executed in 1874 between the emperor of An- 
nam and the French had conceded to the latter a protecto- 
rate over that country. His failure completely to carry out 
his agreement, and the presence of Chinese troops in Ton- 
quin, were regarded as threatening the security of the 
French colony of Cochin China. A small expedition sent 
out under Commander Eivi^re to enforce the provision of 
the treaty was destroyed at Hanoi. Eeinforcements were 
sent out. But the situation was complicated by the pres- 
ence of bands of '' Black Flags," brigands said to be un- 
authorized by the Annam government, and by claims on 
the part of China to a suzerainty over Tonquin. A treaty 
was made with Annam in August, 1883, providing for the 
cession of a province to France, and the establishment of a 
French protectorate over Annam and Tonquin. This, how- 
ever, did not by any means wholly conclude hostilities in 
that province. Sontay was taken from the Black Flags in 
December, and Bacninh occupied in March, 1884. 

War with China. — The advance of the French into re- 
gions over which China claimed suzerainty, and which were 
occupied by Chinese troops, brought on hostilities with that 
empire. In August, 1884, Admiral Courbet destroyed the 
Chinese fleet and arsenal at Foo-chow ; in October he seized 
points on the northern end of the island of Formosa, and 
proclaimed a blockade of that portion of the island. On 
the frontier betv;een Tonquin and China the French gained 
some successes, particularly in the capture of Lang-Son ; yet 
the climate, and the numbers and determination of the 
Chinese troops, rendered it impossible for them to secure 
substantial results from victories. Finally, after a desultory 
and destructive war, a treaty was signed in June, 1885, 
which arranged that Formosa should be evacuated, that 
Annam should in future have no diplomatic relations except 
through France, and that France should have virtually com- 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 673 

plete control over both it and Tonquin, though the question 
of Chinese suzerainty was left unsettled. The French then 
had the difi&cult task of pacifying Annam and Tonquin, and 
keeping order within them. Altogether it was not felt that 
the expeditions against Madagascar, Annam, and China had 
achieved brilliant success. They had, moreover, been a source 
of much expense to France; at first popular, they finally 
caused the downfall of the ministry which ordered them. 

Revision of the Constitution. — That ministry, the minis- 
try of M. Jules Ferry, which had come into office in Febru- 
ary, 1883, had signalized its advent to power by the passage 
of a law suspending for three months the irremovability of 
judges. That measure had been resolved upon in order 
that the judicial body, still composed, in far the greater 
proportion, of Monarchists, might be brought into harmony 
with the Republican government. The strength of the 
Eoyalists, it should be added, seemed to be increasing in 
1884, by reason of important efforts expended upon the 
organization of the party. 

The Ferry ministry remained in power an unusual length 
of time, — a little more than two years. Its principal 
achievement in domestic affairs consisted in bringing about 
the revision of the constitution, which, framed by the Ver- 
sailles Assembly in 1875, was felt by many to contain an 
excessive number of Monarchical elements. According to 
the provisions of the constitution, revision or amendment 
of it could only be carried out by the ISTational Assembly 
or Congress, a joint assembly of the Senate and Chamber 
of Deputies, convened for the purpose. Such a congress, 
restricted in advance to a partial revision, was assembled 
in August, 1884, at Versailles, but accomplished only a few 
changes : a restriction of the Senate's right to vote the 
budget or to interfere with its appropriation, and a provision 
forbidding any future revision to be carried to the extent of 
abrogating the republican form of government. Soon after, 
however, the two houses passed an important law altering 
the composition of the Senate. It was arranged that here- 
after no senators should be chosen for life; if a vacancy 
should occur by the death of one of the seventy -five mem- 
bers who had been so chosen, his successor should be chosen 
to serve nine years, like other senators. Moreover, whereas 
in the departmental electing bodies every commune in France, 
whether large or small, had by the law of 1875 been given 



674 THE GERMAN WAR AND 

but one vote, a representation more nearly proportioned to 
population was now accorded. In 1885, after the fall of the 
Ferry cabinet, a law was passed providing for scrutin de 
liste; each, department being entitled to a number of depu- 
ties proportioned to the number of its citizens, the deputies 
for each were to be chosen on a general or departmental 
ticket. In the same year a law was passed declaring in- 
eligible to the office of President of the Republic, senator or 
deputy, any prince of families formerly reigning in France. 
— The session of 1885 was marked also by the imposition 
of protective duties on cereal and meat products imported 
into France ; the financial policy of France is now completely 
one of protection. 

The Elections of 1885. — The partial elections to the 
Senate at the beginning of this year resulted in a Repub- 
lican gain of twenty-two in that body. But when, in the 
middle of the year, the time approached for the election of 
a new Chamber of Deputies, it was found that the dissen- 
sions between the different groups of the Republican party, 
and especially the wide divergence between the Opportunists 
or Moderates and the Radicals, threatened to bring about a 
large increase in the number of the reactionary deputies. 
At the first elections in October, this in fact resulted. 
But the number of the second elections necessary being 
large, the Republicans united their forces, and, carrying 
most of these elections, maintained their majority. The 
new Chamber consisted of about three hundred and eighty 
Republicans and about two hundred Monarchists ; a much 
larger part of the Republican body than hitherto consisted 
of Radicals and Socialists. In December the National 
Assembly re-elected M. Gr^vy President of the Republic. 

Party Contests ; Expulsion of the Princes. — In the minis- 
try led by M. de Freycinet which held office during the year 
1886, great prominence was attained by the minister of 
war, Greneral Boulanger, whose management of his depart- 
ment and political conduct won him great popularity. The 
ministry contained an unusual number of Radicals, and was 
involved in frequent conflicts with both the followers of 
M. Ferry and the Monarchists. These latter have in recent 
years often joined with the extreme Radicals in attacks 
upon Republican ministers. The political situation was 
still further disturbed by the prevalence of strikes and 
socialistic agitations. 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 675 

The increasing activity of the agents of the Monarchist 
party, the strength which that party had shown in the elec- 
tions of the preceding year, and the demonstrations which 
attended the marriage of the daughter of the Count of Paris 
to the crown prince of Portugal, incited the Republican 
leaders to more stringent measures against the princes of 
houses formerly reigning in France. The government was 
intrusted by law with discretionary power to expel them all 
from France, and definitely charged to expel actual claimants 
of the throne and their direct heirs. The Count of Paris and 
his son the Duke of Orleans, Prince ISTapoleon and his son 
Prince Victor, were accordingly banished by presidential 
decree in June, 1886. General Boulanger struck off from 
the army-roll the names of all princes of the Bonaparte and 
Bourbon families. The Duke of Aumale, indignantly pro- 
testing, was also banished; in the spring of 1889 he was 
permitted to return. 

Meanwhile, within the Republican ranks, dissensions in- 
creased. The popularity of General Boulanger became 
more and more threatening to the cabinets of which he was 
a member. An agitation in his favor, conducted with much 
skill, caused fear lest he were aspiring to a military dicta- 
torship of France. The illegal arrest of a French commis- 
sary of police on the German side of the Alsatian frontier 
produced strained relations with Germany, which at one 
time seemed likely, so warlike was the attitude of General 
Boulanger, to provoke a hostile collision. Soon, however, 
pacific counsels prevailed; General Boulanger was forced to 
resign, and, in order to check the constant agitations and 
demonstrations in his favor, was removed to a military com- 
mand in the South. A law equalizing military service by 
making a three years' term compulsory upon all was passed. 

Fall of M. Gr6vy ; Election of M. Carnot. — The Repub- 
lican party and the parliamentary regime in France were 
becoming constantly more and more discredited, by reason 
of constant dissensions, of frequent cabinet changes, and of 
consequent instability of policy and executive inefficiency. 
To these evils of factiousness and weakness was now added 
a series of damaging scandals. The use of public office as a 
reward for partisan services lay at the bottom of many of 
these ; in others, there were evidences of more direct and 
flagrant corruption. Finally, in the autumn of 1887, an in- 
quiry into the conduct of General Caffarel, deputy to the 



676 THE GERMAN WAR AND 

commander-in-chief, accused of selling decorations, impli- 
cated M. Daniel Wilson, son-in-law of M. Gr6vy, who was 
alleged to have undertaken to obtain appointments to office 
and lucrative contracts in return for money. M. Gravy's 
unwise attempts to shield his son-in-law brought about his 
own fall. The chambers, determined to force his resigna- 
tion, refused to accept any ministry proposed by him. After 
much resistance and irritating delays he submitted, and 
resigned the presidency of the Republic on December 2, 1887. 

On the next day the houses met in National Assembly at 
Versailles to choose the successor of M. Gr^vy. The mem- 
bers of the Right voted for Generals Saussure and Appert. 
The most prominent candidates for the Republicans were M. 
Ferry and M. de Freycinet ; the former, however, was 
unpopular with the country. The followers of both, finding 
their election impossible, resolved to cast their votes for M. 
Sadi Carnot, a Republican of the highest integrity and 
universally respected. M. Carnot, a distinguished engineer, 
grandson of the Carnot who had, as minister of war, organ- 
ized the victories of the armies of the Revolution, was 
accordingly elected President of the French Republic. The 
elections for the partial renewal of the Senate in January, 
1888, resulted in slight Republican losses. A Radical 
cabinet under M. Floquet soon took office. 

General Boulanger. — The chief difficulties encountered by 
the cabinet arose out of the active propagandism exercised 
in behalf of General Boulanger. The extraordinary popu- 
larity of this military hero who had never held an important 
command in Avar, seemed not to be reduced by his removal 
to the retired list for insubordination. Thus made eligible 
to the Chamber of Deputies, General Boulanger began 
actively to contest vacant seats. Returned first for the 
department of Dordogne, and then by an enormous majority 
for the important department of ISTord, he seemed to have 
entered on the direct path leading to military dictatorship. 
A duel in which he was wounded by M. Floquet did not 
injure his cause. Having resigned his seat, he was trium- 
phantly elected on one and the same day by the three depart- 
ments of ISTord, Charente-Inferieure, and Somme. Finally, 
in January, 1889, after a most exciting contest in Paris 
itself, between the upholders of the parliamentary system 
and the Boulangists, with whom the Royalists and many of 
the Radicals made common cause, he was by an enormous 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC- 677 

majority elected as a representative of tlie department of 
tlie Seine. The only programme which he put forward was 
a demand of revision of the constitution and dissolution of 
the Chamber ; his name therefore became the rallying-point 
of those who were hostile to the parliamentary system, or 
to the Eepublican government in its present form. Alarmed 
both by his singular popularity and by his political intrigues, 
the government instituted a proseciition of him before the 
High Court of Justice ; upon this he fled from the country, 
and the dangers of the agitation in his favor were, for the 
time at least, quieted. 

1889. — On May 5, 1889, the one-hundredth anniversary 
of the assembly of the States-General was celebrated at 
Versailles. On the next day. President Carnot formally 
opened the Universal Exhibition at Paris, the greatest of 
the world's fairs which have been held in that city. The 
speeches which were made on these occasions congratulated 
the nation on the material progress of the past hundred 
years, expressed the national gratitude for the beneficent 
results of the Eevolution, and in spite of the difficulties of 
the x^olitical situation, gave utterance to high hopes and 
patriotic confidence in the future of France. 



INDEX. 



Aachen, 79. See Aix-la-Chapelle. 

Abbeville, 189, 238. 

Abbots, 116. 

Abd-el-Kader, 639, 641. 

Abelard, 143. 

Abensberg, battle of, 607. 

Abouklr, battle of, 573. 

Academy, French, 403, 469, 529; other 
academies, 425, 469, 529. 

Acadia, 393, 397, 423, 431, 458, 500. 

Accounts, Chamber of, 181, 184, 244, 408; 
Court of, 624. 

Acre, 149, 573, 574. 

Acte additionel, 626. 

Adalberon, bishop, xxii. 

Adanson, 520. 

Administration, Merovingian, 58; Carolin- 
gian, 78-83; in eleventh century, 124, 
125; under Louis IX., etc., 163, 184; in 
the sixteenth century, 322, 323; under 
Louis XIV., 416-429, 460-467; under 
Louis XV., 498, 506-512; Napoleonic, 
580, 581, 586, 587, 601, 602. 

Adrain I., pope, 74. 

Adrian IV., pope, 125. 

Adrian VI., pope, 305. 

Advocati, 116. 

^dui, 14, 19, 20, 26. 

.^gidius, 35. 

Aetius, 34, 35. 

Affre, Mgr., 646. 

African Company, 397. 

Agde, 72. 

Agincourt, 177, 221. 

Agnadello, 291. 

Agnes of Meran, 155. 

Agriculture, 379, 421, 513, 514, 650, 651. 

Aguesseau, Chancellor D', 519. 

Aids, 114, 102, 210, 420; Court of, 210, 
244, 408, 410, 514. 

Aigues-Mortes, 160. 

Aiguillon, duke of, 502, 504, 541. 

Air-balloon, invented, 530. 

Aix, in Province, 19, 20; parliament of, 
312. 

Aix-la-Chapelle, 79, 83, 84; treaty of, 433 ; 
(another), 495. 

Alais, peace of, 393. 

Alan, duke, 109. 

Alans, 33. 

Alaric, 33. 

Alberoni, Cardinal, 482. 

Albertus Magnus, 166, 171, 174. 



Albigenses, 107, 152; crusade against, 

153, 154. 
Albret, 268; constable d', 221; counts of, 

252. See Henry, Jeanne. 
Alby, cardinal of, 267. 
Alchemy, 171. 
Alciati, 328. 
Alcuin, 83, 84. 
Alemanni, 30, 32, 36, 62, 68, 69; defeated 

by Clovis, 39, 43; code of, 56. 
Alemannia, 88. 
AlenQon, 256, 258, 272; duke of, xiiv, 241, 

242, 248, 251, 252, 266, 267, 278, (brother 

of Henry HI.) 351, 352 (see Anjou), 

671. 
Alesia, 23, 24. 
Alessandria, 653. 
Alexander the Grreat, 17. 
Alexander VI. Borgia, pope, 283, 284, 

286, 288. 
Alexander VTI., pope, 431. 
Alexander I., czar, 585, 600, 606, 612-615, 

617, 618, 621, 632. 
Alexander II., czar, 652. 
Alexis, emperor, 129, 130. 
Alexis Angelos, 152. 
Alfonzo II., k. of Naples, 285. 
Alfort, veterinary school of, 529. 
Algeria, Algiers, 431, 440; conquest of, 

635, 637-639. 
Allia, river, 15. 
Alliance, Grand, 435, 450, 451; Holy, 631, 

633; Triple, 432, 433; (another), 481, 

483 ; Quadruple, 637. 
Allobroges, 19. 
Allodial lands, 55, 111. 
Alma, battle of the, 652. 
Alost, 142. 

Alps, 7; crossed by Pippin, 72; cam- 
paign in, 561; crossed by Bonaparte, 

582, 583. 
Alsace, 4, 264, 400, 402, 407, 436, 440, 455, 

458, 511; ceded, 661. 
Alva, duke of, 316, 343, 344, 346. 
Alvinzi (Alvinczy), marshal, 568, 569. 
Amalfi, 168. 
Arabiani, 21. 
Ambiorix, 21, 22. 
Amboise, Cardinal George of, 289, 295, 

296, 297, 325, 344. 
Amboise, chateau of, 325; conspiracy of, 

335, 336; peace of, 342, 343. 
American Isles, Company of the, 397. 



680 



INDEX. 



American "War, 524-528. 

Amienois, 155, 156. 

Amiens, 137, 238, 260; count of, 139; 
county of, 149; captured, 375; peace of, 
585, 588. 

Amsterdam, 435, 563. 

Araurath, sultan, 217. 

Amyot, 330. 

Anagni, 179. 

Anastasius, emperor, 41. 

Ancona, 569, 639. 

Ancre, marquis d', 386, 389, 390. 

Andalusia, 128. 

Andelot, treaty of, 51. 

Angers, 94, 356 ; University of, 167, 170. 

Ango, Roger, 297, 325. 

Angouleme, count of, 275, 276; county of, 
94; duke of, 347; bastard of, 347; peace 
of, 390. 

Angoumois, 175, 181, 194. 

Anjou, 278; counts of, 108, 109, 139, 163, 
164; acquisition of, 150, 155, 272; dukes 
of, 202, 212, 213, 252, 253; (Henry HI.) 
345-347, 349; (his hrottier) 352, 353, 
C^ii, 357. See fhilip V., k. of Spain, 
and Louis XV. 

Annam, wars in, 654, 672, 673. 

Anne of Austria, queen, 389, 394, 404, 405, 
409, 410, 412, 413, 449. 

Anne, q. of England, 450, 451. 

Anne of Beaujeu. See Beaujeu. 

Anne of Brittany, queen, 280, 281, 288, 
297, 303. 

Anne of Muscovy, queen, 108. 

Ansegis, 104. 

Anselm, St., 119, 120, 171. 

Anselme, Gen., 554. 

Antibes, 7, 427, 494. 

Antin, duke of, 466. 

Antioch, 130-132. 

Antrustions, 58. 

Antwerp, 454, 601, 608, 637. 

Apollinaris, Sidonius, 28. 

Appert, Gen., 676. 

Apulia, duchy of, 127. 

Aquae Sextiae, 19. 

Aquitaine, duchy of, 94, 139; under the 
English, 201; duke of, 142. 

Aquitania, onquered by Cassar, 21; ex- 
tended by Augustus, 26; under the 
Visigoths, 34; the Franks, 43, 48, 49, 
51; independent, 62; Saracens in, 68; 
conquered by Pippin and Charlemagne, 
72, 73; under the Carolingians, 86, 88, 
91, 94, 100, 101. 

Aquitanians, 10, 68, 69, 91, 97; under the 
Capetians, 106, 107. 

Arabi Pasha, 671. 

Arabs, 68, 73, 87, 128. 

Arago, 644, 645. 

Aragon, 270, 454; king of, 153, 160, 253, 
268. 

Aranda, count of, 521. 

Arbogast, 31, 33. 

Arc. See Jeanne d'Arc. 

Arc de I'fitoile, 602 ; de Triomphe, 602, 

Architecture, 297, 324-326; ecclesiastical, 
120, 121. 



Archives, royal, 158. 

Arcis-sur-Aube, battle of, 621. 

Arcole, battle of, 569. 

Ardennes, 3. 

Aretino, 297. 

Argenson, marquis of, 492, 495, 516, 520. 

Argonne, 3, 553. 

Arians, 37, 40, 42. 

Ariovistus, 20. 

Aristocracy, 81 (see Nobility) ; abolition 
of privileges of, 541. 

Aristotle, 171. 

Aries, 26. 

Armada, the Invincible, 360. 

Armagnac, 272; counts of, xxiv, 205, 219, 
221; (John) 248, 252, 255, 256, 260, 261; 
267, 268, 276. See Nemours. 

Armagnacs, 218-223, 228. 

Armorica, 21, 24, 35, 36, 40, 78. 

Arms, 10, 11, 116, 133. 

Army, Carolingian, 80; under Philip Au- 
gustus, 157; under Charles V., 205, 207; 
under Charles VII., 241, 243; in the 
sixteenth century, 322, 380, 425; under 
Louis XIII. and XIV., 425, 426, 464, 
465; under Louis XV., 509, 510; Revolu- 
tionary, 5S0; recent, 663. 

Arnauld, Antoine, 464, 473, 474. 

Arndt, 617. 

Arnulf, St., 61, 62, 66, 104. 

Arnulf, king of Germany, 100, 101. 

Arques, battle of, 366. 

Arras, 401, 413; treaty of, 237, 238; (an- 
other), 271, 272, 279. 

Arriere-vassals, 98. 

Arrondissements, 580. 

Art, 297, 324-327, 381, 424, 425, 520, 602. 

Arteveld, James van, 188, 189. 

Arteveld, Philip van, 213. 

Arthur, d. of Brittany, 150. 

Artillery, 191, 193, 240, 246, 322, 380. 

Artois, 3, 149, 155, 194, 238, 272, 284, 299, 
401, 402, 414, 430, 438, 458, 511; count 
of, 161, 252. See Charles X. 

Arverni, 14, 19, 23, 26. 

Ascalon, 131. 

Asiento, 458, 495. 

Aspern, battle of, 607. 

Ass, Feast of the, 122. 

Assembly, National or Constituent, 519, 
533,538-549; Legislative, 550-554; Con- 
stituent, of 1848, 645, 646; Legislative, 
647, 648; National, of 1871, 660-665; 
under constitution of 1875, 665, 666, 668, 
673, 676. 

Asseurement, 156, 162. 

Assignats, 545, 565, 566, 571. 

Assizes of Jerusalem, xix. 

Astolf, 72. 

Astrology, 171. 

Atabeks, 145. 

Ataulf, 33. 

Athanagild, 49. 

Attigny, 74, 87. 

Attila, 34, 35. 

Aubign^, Agrippa d', 381. 

Aubigny, marshal d', 301, 

Auch, 26, 



INDEX. 



681 



Audowere, 50. 

Auerstadt, battle of, 597. 

Augereau, marshal, 567, 571, 590, 599, 620. 

Augsburg, league of, 441, 444; peace of, 

319. 
Augusta, 26. 
Augustodunum, 26. 
Augustoritura, 26. 
Augustus, emperor, 26, 27. 
Augustus II., k. of Poland, 489. 
Augustus III., k. of Poland, 490. 
Aulerei, 21. 
Aulic Council, 575. 
Auraale, duke of, 347, 356, 361; (son of 

Louis Philippe), 643, 662, 671, 675. 
Aumont, marshal d', 361, 366. 
Auneau, battle of, 359. 
Aunis, 155. 
Auray, 204. 
Aurelian, 30, 33. 
AuBCi, 26. 
Ausonius, 28. 

Austerlitz, battle of, 594-596. 
Austrasia, 44, 48, 51, 66, 69. 
Austrasians, .52, 61, 64, 68, 73, 89. 
Austria, 242, 270, 290, 430, 527, 556; house 

of, 319, 382, 391, 399-402, 406; wars with, 

556-584, 593-595, 606-608, 617-621, 626; 

empire of, 595, 610, 631, 642; Italian 

war with, 653. 
Austrian Succession, War of the, 491-495. 
Autun, 26, 28, 44; Saracens at, 68. 
Auvergne, 2, 43, 44, 155, 195; count of, 

142; county of, 94, 98; states of, 241, 

355. 
Auxerre, 231, 238, 272. 
Avaricum, 23. 
Avars, 48, 49, 73, 74, 75, 87. 
Avignon, 155, 168, 175, 202, 441; popes at, 

179, 180, 185, 187. 
Avranches, 245. 
Aydie, Odet d', 262^ 263. 
Azay-le-Rideau, chateau, 325-. 

Baboeuf, 571. 

Bacninb, 672. 

Bacon, Roger, 166, 171, 174, 193. 

Badajoz, 617. 

Baden, 618; prince of, 452; treaty of, 457, 

458. 
Baderic, 43, 44. 
BagaudiB, 30. 
Bagration, prince, 614. 
Baif, J. A. de, 331. 
Baillis, 156, 296. 
Bailly, 539, 541, 549, 558. 
Bajazet, sultan, 217, 272. 
Balafr6, Le. See Guise, Henry, dfike 

of. 
Baldwin, count of Flanders, emperor, 

153. 
Balearic Isles, 75, 78. 
Balue, Cardinal, 260. 
Baluze, 474. 
Balzac, 469. 
Baner, Johan, 401, 402. 
Bank of France, 586. 
Banquets, political, 642, 643. 



Barbarians, invasion of, 32-35. See, also, 

Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Huns. 
Barbary States, 431, 574. 
Barbfes, 645. 
Barbezieux, 446. 
Barcelona, 75, 448, 454; count of, 126, 139, 

153; county of, 160. 
Barcelonette, 458. 
Barclay de Tolly, 614. 
Bard, fort of, 582, 583. 
Bards, Gallic, 12. 
Barentin, 538. 
Barletta, 290. 
Barras, 558, 566, 577. 
Barrtjre, 558, 560. 
Barry, countess du, 502, 503. 
Bartbelemy, 571. 
Basel, Council of, 245, 278, 309. 
Basina, 35. 

Basques, 9, 10, 62, 75, 87. See Vascones. 
Bassompierre, marshal, 395. 
Bastile, 210, 217, 238, 268, 269, 389, 395, 412, 

419, 517, 531; destruction of, 540, 541. 
Batavia, 30. 

Batavian Republic, 563, 574, 584. 
Bathilda, 63. 

Baudricourt, sieur de, 229. 
Bauge, 223. 
Bautzen, 617. 
Bavaria, 17, 49, 88, 89; electors of, 406, 

414, 450, 452, 458, 491 ; electoral prince 

of, 449; king of, 610, 618, 631. 
Bavarians, 39, 56, 62, 68, 69, 74, 75. 
Bayard, Chevalier, 290, 301, 302, 305, 306, 

329. 
Bayeux, 245. 
Bayle, 474. 

Baylen, capitulation of, 606. 
Bayonne, 7, 168, 208, 306, 422; conferences 

of, 343; interview of, 605. 
Bazaine, marshal, 658, 659, 663. 
Beachy Head, battle off, 445. 
Beam, 391, 534. 

Beam, Henry of. See Henry IV. 
Beaufort, Cardinal, 234, 236, 237. 
Beaufort, duke of, 405, 410, 431. 
Beaugency, battle of, 659. 
Beauharnais, Eugene de, 592, 604; Hor- 

tensede,646; Josephine. 8e" Josephine 

de Beauharnais. 
Beaujeu, Anne de, 257, 269, 275, 276, 278- 

281, 284, 288. 
Beaujeu, Pierre de, 257, 269, 275, 278. 
Beaulieu, 352. 

Beaulieu, baron, 567, 568, 570. 
Beaumarchais, 526. 
Beaumont, Christophe de, archbishop, 

503. 
Beauvais, 137, 256, 262; bishop of, 151 

( see Cauchon ) ; cardinal-bishop of 

(Chatillon), 335. 
Beauvaisis, count of, 139. 
Beauvilliers, duke of, 450, 462, 467. 
Bee, 119. 

Becket, Thomas, 146. 
Bedford, duke of, 225-227, 237. 
Begga, 104. 
Beggars, 344, 346. 



682 



INDEX. 



Beguins, 180. 

Belfort, 427, 660, 661. 

Belgse, 9, 10, 21. 

Belgium, 89, 383, 570, 572, 626-629, 636. 

Belgrade, treaty of, 490. 

Bellay, Cardinal du, 326, 329. 

Bellay, Joachim du, 331. 

Bellay, Martin du, 329. 

Belleau, Remy, 331. 

Belle-Isle, count of, 491, 492, 494. 

Bellerophon, the, 630. 

Bellovaci, 21, 24. 

Benedetti, Count, 657. 

Benedict, St., 54, 87, 118, 173. 

Benedict, St., of Aniane, 83. 

Benedict XI., pope, 179, 185. 

Benedict XIII., pope, 224. 

Benedictines, 118, 173, 474. 

Beaeflces, 59, 60, 80, 81, 82, 98, 111, 112. 

Benevento, 127; dukes of, 74, 75, 78. 

Bennigsen, Count, 599. 

Berengar of Tours, 120. 

Beresina, passage of the, 615, 616. 

Bergeu, 575. 

Bergen-op-Zoom, 494. 

Bergerac, peace of, 354, 355. 

Berlin, 598; Decree, 598, 612, 613; Con- 
gress of, 668. 

Bern, 265, 266, 574. 

Boruadotte, marshal, 591, 596; crown- 
prince of Sweden, 610, 613, 618, 620. 

Bernard, St., xx, 142, 143, 145, 178. 

Bernard, grandson of Charlemagne, 86, 
87. 

Bernard, d. of Aquitaine, 91. 

Bernhard, d. of Saxe-Weimar, 400-402, 
405. 

Berquin, Louis, 309, 310. 

Berry, 195, 352, 389; county of, 98; dukes 
of, 212-216, 218, 254-256, 459, 633; duch- 
ess of, 637. 

Berserker, 92. 

Bert, M. Paul, 670. 

Bertha, queen, 107. 

Berthar, 43, 46. 

Berthier, intendant, 543. 

Berthier, grand huntsman, 591. 

Berthier, marshal, 590, 596, 621. 

Berthold, of Bruges, 141. 

Bertrand de Goth (Clement V.), 179. 

Berwick, marshal, 482, 490. 

Besangon, 427, 435, 440; university of, 
274. 

Besme, 347. 

Bessarabia, 652. 

Bessiere, marshal, 590. 

B^thencourt, Jean de, 211. 

B^ziers, 72, 154. 

Biarritz, 168. 

Bibracte, 26. 

Bicocca, 305, 308. 

Billaud-Varennes, 559, 560. 

Biron, marshal (elder), 345; (younger), 
369, 373, 375, 382. 

Biscay, bay of, 7. 

Bishops, in sixth century, 53, 54, 59, 60; 
seventh, 61, 64; under Carolingians, 79, 
80, 81, 97, 99; in eleventh century. 



116, 117; under Louis XrV.,463; Louis 
XV., 510. 

Bismarck, Prince, 661. 

Bithynia, 18. 

Bitsch, 427. 

Bituriges, 14, 23, 24, 26. 

Black Death, 192. 

Black Flags, 672. 

Black Forest, 570, 594. 

Black Sea, 652. 

Blanc, Louis, 644. 

Blanchard, 530. 

Blanche of Castile, queen, 159-161. 

Blanche of Bourbon, q. of Castile, 205. 

Blanchetaque, 189, 220. 

Blancmenil, 409. 

Blanqui, 645. 

Bleneau, battle of, 412. 

Blenheim, 453. 

Blockade, Continental, 598, 604, 611-613. 

Blois, 340; counts of, 108,109, 130; county 
of, 159, 295; treaty of, 290; states-gen- 
eral of, 353, 360; ordinance of, 354. 

Bliicher, marshal, 598, 618-621, 626, 627, 
629, 630. 

Bodin, Jean, 329. 

Boetie, £ltienne de la, 329. 

Bohemia, 17, 62, 74, 78, 399, 401, 491-493. 

Bohernoud of Tarento, 130. 

Boii, 15, 16, 17. 

Boileau, filtienne, 163, 164. 

Boileau, Nicole, 381, 416, 425, 463, 468, 
469. 

Bois de Boulogne, Bois de Vincennes, 
650. 

Bois-Guilbert, 513, 516. 

Bolingbroke, 456. 

Bologna, 167, 292, 293, 569. 

Bomarsund, 652. 

Bonaparte, Caroline, 596. 

Bonaparte, Charles, 564. 

Bonaparte, Eliza, 596. 

Bonaparte, Jerome, 600, 604, 669. 

Bonaparte, Joseph, 590, 592, 596, 604^-606, 
617. 

Bonaparte, Louis, 590, 596, 604, 612, 646. 

Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon, 638, 646-649. 
See Napoleon in., IV. 

Bonaparte, Lucien, 577. 

Bonaparte, Napoleon. See Napoleon I., 
Napoleon, Prince. 

Bonaparte, Pauline, 696. 

Bonaparte, Victor, 669. 

Bonapartists, 669, 670. 

Boniface, St., 69, 70. 

Boniface VIII. , pope, 176, 178, 179, 185. 

Bonn, 435, 441. 

Bonne of Savoy, 253. 

Bonnivet, admiral, 306. 

Bordeaux, 4, 5, 7, 28, 40, 43, 168, 348, 495; 
Saracens at, 68; Northmen, 91, 93; 
archbishop of, 179; English at, 194, 
196,205, 206, 208; recovered, 246; par- 
liament of, 252, 273, 375, 442; in the 
Revolution, 558; since, 620, 660. 

Bordeaux, duke of, 633. See Chambord. 

Borel, duke, 107. 

Borghetto, battle of, 568. 



INDEX. 



683 



Borgia, Caesar, 285, 289. 

Borisof, bridge of, 616. 

Boiodino, battle of, 614. 

Bossuet, 416, 442, 463, 464, 468, 470, 471, 
473, 474. 

Bouchaln, 437. 
• Boucher, 520. 

Boucicaut, marshal, 203. 

Boufflers, marshal, 445, 451. 

Bougainville, 529. 

Bouguer, 520. 

Bouill^, marquis of, 526, 527, 548. 

Bouillon, 631 ; dukes of, 305, 395, 396, 410, 
415, 510. 

Boulanger, Gen., 674-677. 

Boulogne, 77, 256, 272, 318, 427; count of, 
150,151; sieges of, 311, 314; flotilla and 
camp of, 585, 592, 593, 604. 

Boulonnais, 3. 

Bourbalji, Gen., 660. 

Bourbon, Antoine de, 320, 333, 335, 336, 
338, 340, 341, 364. 

Bourbon, Charles, cardinal, 333, 356, 365, 
368. 

Bourbon, bastard of, xxiv, 242; sire of, 
139; duke of, 212, 221, 227, 241, 252-257, 
275, 276, 278; constable duke of, 301, 
302, 305-308; house of, 351, 364, 414, 
610; duke of (prime minister), 484, 487, 
488; (another), 543. 

Bourbon, island of, 423, 458, 494, 495. See 
RtJunion. 

Bourbonnais, 142. 

Bourdaloue, 416, 470, 473. 

Bourg-la-Reine, 189, 201. 

Bouteville, count of, 394. 

Bouvines, battle of, 150, 151. 

Boyne, battle of the, 445. 

Brabant, 103, 270. 

Braganza, house of, 605, 610. 

Brandenburg, elector of, 434, 435, 438. 

Brantome, 329. 

Brazil, 424, 610. 

Breda, treaty of, 431. 

Brelsach, Alt-, 401, 407, 440. 

Bremen, 407, 612. 

Brenneville, 123, 141. 

Brescia, 292. 

Bresse, 318, 376. 

Brest, 208, 397, 424, 427, 494, 593, 601. 

Bretigny, treaty of, 201, 206. 

Bretons, 46, 62, 76, 78, 87, 91, 93, 94, 97, 
101, 109; king of, 100; revolt of, 136. 

Br6ze, marquis of, 539. 

Briangon, 427. 

Briare, canal of, 380. 

Brie, 259. 

Brienne, Lom^nie de, 532-534. 

Brissac, marshal, 316, 372. 

Brisson, President, 370. 

Brissot, 550. 

Britain, 21. 

Britons, 35, 36. 

Brittany, 3, 46, 146, 208, 534; count of, 
98, 161 ; dukes of, 139, 216, 226, 242, 245, 
251, 253-262, 267, 269, 459; war of suc- 
cession in, 188, 189, 203, 204; joined to 
France, 281, 288; states of, 355. 



Broglie, duke of, 492; marshal, 539; 
dukes of, 634, 637, 664, 667. 

Brouage, 397. 

Broussel, 409. 

Bructeri, 32. 

Brueys, admiral, 573. 

Brueys, Peter de, 153. 

Bruges, 141, 142, 168, 213, 455. 

Brumaire, 18th, 576, 577, 612. 

Brune, marshal, 575, 584, 590. 

Brunehilde, 48-52, 61, 63. 

Brunelleschi, 297. 

Brunetto Latini, xx, 172. 

Brunswick, duke of, 414, 610. See Fer- 
dinand. 

Brussels, 454, 493, 550, 554. 

Buch, Captal de, 204. 

Bucharest, peace of, 613. 

Buckingham, duke of, 393. 

Bude, 297, 328. 

Buffon, 519, 520, 530. 

Bugeaud, marshal, 641, 643. 

Bugey, 318, 376. 

Billow, Gen., 628, 629. 

Bureau, Jean, 240, 246. 

Burgundians, invasion of, 33, 34; their 
kingdom, 36, 37; subdued by Clovis, 
40, 43; by his sons, 44; under the Mero- 
vingians, 52, 62; code of, 56; under the 
Carolingians, 68, 89. 

Burgundy, 8, S8; Merovingian kingdom 
of, 48, 51, 69; Carolingian duchy of, 
94, 98, 107; kingdoms of Uisjurane and 
Transjurane, 96, 100, 101; duchy of, 
first Capetiau, 108, 139; second Cape- 
tian duchy of, 202, 248, 252, 263-266, 
272; county of, see Franche-Comte; 
states of, 307, 355; canal of, 422; dukes 
of, see their names, Philip, John, 
Charles, Louis. 

Byng, admiral, 496. 

Byzantine Empire, 41, 62, 72, 84. 

Cabanis, 602. 

Cabinets, 666, 667. 

Caboche, 219. 

Cabochiens, 219, 220. 

Cadiz, 593, 633. 

Cadoudal, Georges, 589, 593. 

Cadurci, 24. 

Caen, 7, 189, 221, 246, 256, 258. 

Caesar, Julius, conquest of Gaul, 20-25. 

Csesarodunum, 26. 

Caffarel, Gen., 675. 

Cagliostro, 530. 

Cahiers, 277, 278, 387, 388, 536, 537. 

Cahors, 43. 

Cairo, 152, 572, 573, 585. 

Cajetauo, cardinal, 368. 

Calais, taken by Edward III., 190-192, 
194, 228; under the English, 201, 207, 
208, 227, 265, 284, 293, 299; recovered, 
317,318,333, 342; 375,427. 

Calas, 514. 

Calendar, republican, 565. 

Calixtus II., pope, 142. 

Calonne, xxix, 532. 

Calvin, 333, 334. 



684 



INDEX. 



Camargue, 5. 

Cambacerfes, 579, 590. 

Cambodia, 654. 

Cambrai, 34, 36, 38, 41, 438; battle at, 68; 

bishop of, 126; commune of, 137; league 

of, 291, 292; treaty of, 308. 
Cambronne, Q-en., 629. 
Camillus, 16. 
Camisarda, 453. 
Campo-Formio, treaty of, 572. 
Campus Martius, 67, 73, 80. 
Camulogenus, 23. 
Canada, 323, 380, 397, 423, 448, 496, 499, 

500. 
Canaries, 211. 
Cannae, 16. 

Cannes, landing at, 625. 
Cape Breton, 393, 397, 494, 495, 500. 
Cape Colony, 585. 
Capetians, 93, 100, 105, 106 et seqq. 
Capitularies, 79, 82, 83. 
Captal de Buch, see Buch. 
Carbonari, 633. 
Carcassonne, 68, 72, 154. 
Cardona, Karaon de, 292, 293. 
Carl, see Charles Martel and Charle- 
magne. 
Carlat, 268. 
Carlomau, son of Charles Martel, 69, 70, 

78, 104. 
Carloman, son of Pippin, 73, 104. 
Carloman, kins;, 95, 104. 
Carlos, Don, 637, 638. 
Carnac, monuments of, 12. 
Carnot, Count, 558, 560, 562, 566, 567, 569, 

571. 
Carnot, M. Sadl, President, 676, 677. 
Carnutes, 12, 22, 24, 26. 
Carolingians, 63, 66-104. 
Carrier, 558, 560. 
Cartagena, 454. 
Cartier, Jacques, 322. 
Casale, 399, 413, 440. 
Casaubon, 474. 
Cassano, battle of, 575. 
Cassation, court of, 580, 624. 
Cassel, 187, 438. 
Cassini, Domenico, 476. 
Castelnau, 340, 341, 351. 
Castelnaudary, 154, 395. 
Castelnovo, 289. 
Castel-Rodrigo, 432. 
Castiglione, battle of, 568. 
Castile, 128, 226, 270, 290. 
Castillon, 246. 
Castles, 97, 115. 
Catalaunian plains, 34, 35. 
Catalonia, invasions of, 175, 454, 606; 

revolts of, 400-402, 406, 430. 
Cateau-Cambr^sls, 401; treaty of, 317, 

318, 334, 376. 
Cathedrals, 120, 121, 173. 
Cathelineau, 561, 562. 
Catherine, dau. of Charles VI., 223. 
Catherine II., of Russia, 518, 527. 
Catherine of Aragon, 308, 
Catharine de' Medici, 309, 326, 332, 333, 

338-340, 342-350, 361, 363. 



Catholics, 37, 40, 42. See Religion, wars of. 
Catinat, marshal, 443, 445, 446, 451, 452, 

465, 467. 
Cattaro, Bocche di, 600. 
Cauchon, Pierre, bp., 232, 234, 235. 
Caulaincourt, 591. 
Caux, Pays de, 3, 
Cavalgnac, Gen., 646. 
Cayenne, 423, 437, 458. 
Cellamare, duke of, 482. 
Cellini, Benvenuto, 325. 
Celtiberians, 15, 19. 
Celts, 9. See Gauls. 
Cenomani, 15. 

Censorship of the Press, 514, 611. 
Centenarius, 80, 81, 112. 
CerdaHa, 253, 272, 284, 414, 430. 
Cerignola, 290. 
Cerisola, 311. 
Cette, 422. 
Cevennes, 2, 3, 5, 6, 22 ; insurgenlB in the, 

213, 338, 392, 453. 
Ceylon, 585. 

Chalons, 87, 231, 356, 658. 
Chamber of Deputies, 629, 631, 634, 635, 

637, 639; in Third Republic, 665-668, 

670, 671, 673, 676. 
Chambord, chateau, 325, 479. 
Chambord, count of (Henry V.), 633, 635, 

662, 664, 671. 
Chamillard, 451. 
Champagne, count of, 139, 144, 159 ; county 

of, 175, 181, 194, 259, 260, 383, 389; mar- 
shal of, 198. 
Champagne, Philippe de, 477. 
Champaubert, battle of, 620. 
Champ de Mars, see Campus Martius; 

affair of the (1791;, 548, 549. 
Champlain, 380, 397. 
Chandernagore, 424, 528. 
Chansons de geste, 172. 
Chanzy, Gen., 659, 660. 
Chapelle, Sainte, 165, 173. 
Chapters, 117. 
Chararic, 41. 

Charibert, k. of Paris, 48, 71. 
Charibert, brother of Dagobert I., 62, 71. 
Charities, in eighteenth century, 515, 516. 
Charlemagne (Carl), xix, 67, 93, 104, 116, 

230; king, 73; reign and conquests, 73- 

77; emperor, 76; government, 78-85. 
Charlemont, 427. 
Charleroi, 448, 562. 
Charles, see Charlemagne. 
Charles II. the Bald, 88-95, 104, 118. 
Charles III. the Fat, emperor, 95, 96, 100, 

104. 
Charles m. the Simple, king, 95, 100, 101, 

102, 104. 
Charles, d. of Lorraine, 104, 105. 
Charles IV. the Fair, 183-186. 
Charles V. (dauphin), 196-201; (king), 

203-212, 278, 282, 364. 
Charles VI., 209, 212-224, 364. 
Charles VII. (dauphin;, 223; (king), 225- 

250, 266, 279, 282, 322, 364. 
Charles VIII., 261, 269, 275-287, 299, 319, 

364. 



INDEX. 



685 



Charles IX., 338-349, 364, 381. 

Charles X. (ct. of Artois), 535, 543, 548; 

(king), 634, 635. 
Charles V. (archduke), 270, 290, 301, 304; 

(emperor), 304, 305, 307, 308, 310-312, 

314-316, 319, 364, 416. 
Charles VI. (archduke), 449, 454, 456; 

(emperor), 457, 482, 488^91. 
Charles VII. (elector), 491; (emperor), 

493. 
Charles, son of Charlemagne, 86. 
Charles the Bad, k. of Navarre, 194, 195, 

199, 200, 203, 204, 206. 
Charles the Bold or Rash, ct. of Charo- 

lals, 248, 253-257; d. of Burgundy, 258- 

270 364. 
Charles, brother of Louis XI., 253-261, 

267. 
Charles, ct. of Angouleme, 364. 
Charles I., k. of England, 392, 393. 
Charles n., k. of England, 431, 433, 438. 
Charles II., k. of Spain, 431, 433, 435, 448, 

449, 450. 
Charles HI., k. of Spain, 521. 
Charles IV., k. of Spain, 605. 
Charles XII., k. of Sweden, 455, 482. 
Charles Albert, k. of Sardinia, 647. 
Charles the Good, ct. of Flanders, 141. 
Charles of Anjou, ct. of Provence, 161, 

175,186; (another), 271. 
Charles of Blois, 188, 189, 204. 
Charles, ct. of Valois, 186, 364. 
Charles, archduke, 569, 570, 575, 584, 593, 

606-608. 
Charles Martel, 68, 69, 104. 
Charles Stuart (Young Pretender) , 493. 
Charolais, 272, 284, ct. of, see Charles the 

Bold. 
Charte Const Uuti07ielle, 624, 632, 636, 

636. 
Chartier, Alain, 250. 
Charton, 409. 
Chartres, 236, 369, 372 ; county of, 94, 95, 

159, 278; duke of, 671. 
Chateaubriand, 602, 634. 
Chateaubriant, countess of, 303; edict of, 

315. 
Chateau-Dauphin, 458. 
Chateauroux, duchess of, 492. 
Chatel, Jean, 373. 
Chatillon, house of, 320, 335. 
Chiltillon, Jacques de, 177. 
Chatti, 32. 
Chauraont, 661. 
Chelles, 50. 
Cheinnilz, 401. 
Chc-nier, Andr6, 602. 
Chenonceaux, chateau, 325, 326. 
Cberasco, peace of, 399; armistice of, 

567. 
Cherbourg, 208, 246, 427, 445, 601. 
Cherusci, 32. 
Chesterfield, Lord, 521. 
Chevalier, ^;}tienne, 240. 
Chiari, battle of, 452. 
Childebert I., 43-46, 71. 
Childebert II., 50, 51, 71. 
Childebert III., 71. 



Childeric L, 35, 71. 

Childeric II., 64, 71. 

Childeric III., 69, 70, 71. 

Ohillon, vice-admiral, 313. 

Chilperic I., 48-51, 71. 

ChilpericII., 71. 

China, war with (1860), 654; (1884, 1885), 
672, 673. 

Chinon, 230, 232. 

Chios, 249, 291. 

Chivalry, 133, 134. 

Chloderic, 41. 

Chlodomir, 43, 44, 45, 71. 

Chlodwald (St. Cloud), 45. 

Chlothar I., 43-48, 54, 71; his sons and 
grandsons, 48-52. 

Chlothar II., 51, 52, 54, 61, 62, 63, 71. 

Chlothar III., 63, 64, 71. 

Choiseul, duke of, 500-504, 510, 517, 526. 

ChoUet, 562. 

Chotusitz, battle of, 491. 

Chcuans, 557. 

Chrestien de Troyes, 172. 

Christianity, in Gaul, 28; under the 
Merovingians, 47; under Carolingiaus, 
99. 

Church, relations of Franks with, 40, 42, 
46; in the sixth century, 53-55, 57; 
relations with Carolingiaus, 69, 70, 81, 
99; with the Capetians, 106; in the 
eleventh century, 116-121, 124-126; and 
serfdom, 139; under Philip Augustus 
and St. Louis, 157, 164; and Fraucis I., 
302, 303; under Louis XIV., 463, 464; 
under Louis XV., 510; property nation- 
alized, 544, 545; under Napoleon, 586. 

Cicero, Quintus, 22. 

Cimbri, 19, 20. 

Cinq-Mars, marquis of, 395, 396. 

Cisalpine Republic, 572, 574, 584, 587. 

Cispadane Republic, 569. 

Citeaux, xx. 

Ciudad-Rodrigo, 454, 617. 

Civilis, 29, 30. 

Civitates, 58. 

Clairaut, 520. 

Clair-sur-Epte, 101. 

Clarence, d. of, 223. 

Claude, dau. of Louis XII., 290, 291, 364. 

Claude Lorraine, 416, 476, 477. 

Claudius, 29. 

ClauBcl, marshal, 638. 

Clement V., pope, 179, 180. 

Clement VI., pope, 192. 

Clenient VII., anti-jjope, 211. 

Clement VII., pope, 307. 

Clement VIII., pope, 383. 

Clement XIV., pope, -502. 

Clement of Bavaria, 441. 

Clement, Jacques, 363, 365. 

Clergy, in sixth century, 53-55; in 
eleventh, 116-120; in sixteenth, 321; 
under Louis XIV., 463, 4fi4; Civil Con- 
stitution of the, 547; non-juring, 550. 

Clermont (Ferrand), 94; council of, 129, 
132, 136; counts of, 139, 227,245; bishop 
of, 142. 

Cleves, 383, 595. 



686 



INDEX. 



Clisson, Olivier de, 189, 203, 215, 216. 

Clive, Lord, 499. 

Clodiou, 34, 71. 

Clotilda, .39, 40, 42, 44, 45. 

Cloud, St. (Chlodwald), 45. 

Clovis, king, xviii, 36, 71; his reign, con- 
version and conquests, 38-42; reigns of 
his sons, 43-47. 

Clovis, son of Chilperic I., 50. 

Clovis II., 63, 71. 

Clovis, son of Chlothar III., 71. 

Clovis ni., 71. 

Clubs, revolutionary, 546. 

Clusium, 15. 

Coalition, First, 551; Second, 574; Third, 
593; Sixth, 617. 

Coblenz, 550, 553. 

Coburg, prince of, 561, 562. 

Cochin China, 672. 

Codes, of the barbarians, 56, 57. 

Codes, Colbert's, Code Louis, etc., 428; 
code of Convention, 565; Napoleon's, 
586, 601. 

Coehorn, 447. 

Cojur, Jacques, 240, 244, 249. 

Cognac, 346. 

Colbert, 388, 398, 416, 419-426, 428-430, 
433, 438, 441, 442, 449, 467, 469, 517. 

CoUgny, admiral, 316, 317, 335, 336, 344- 
347, 355. 

College of France, 327. 

College of the Four Nations, 415. 

Collot-d'Herbois, 558-560. 

Colmar, 88, 436. 

Cologne, 36, 41, 435; elector of, 264, 441. 

Colombe, Michel, 325. 

Coloni, 55, 66, 57. 

Colonies, under Francis I., 322; under 
Charles IX., 345; under Henry IV., 
380; under Richelieu, 397; under Louis 
XIV. and XV., 457, 513; under Napo- 
leon, 585, 588. 

Colonua, constable, 415. 

Colonna, Prosper, -301. 

Colonna, Sciarra, 179. 

Columbau, St., 52, 69. 

Comedie Frangaise, 529. 

Comes, 27. See Count. 

Comines, Philippe de, 259, 262, 272, 273, 
274, 286, 297. 

Commendation, 59, 60. 

Commerce, 14, 28, 133, 168-170, 380, 398, 
422-424, 433, 513, 586, 602, 651. 

Committees of public safety and of general 
security, 557-560. 

Commune of Paris, 552, 553, 557-560, 661, 
662, 667. 

Communes, xxii, xxiii, 135-187, 164, 166, 
167, 209. 

Compagnie d'Occident, 484; des Indes, 
484, 485, 513. 

Compagnies, grandes, 203, 205, 228. 

Compiegne, 46, 232, 236, 602. 

Compostella, 126. 

Concini, 386, 389, 390. 

Concordat, of Francis I., 302, 303; of 
Napoleon, 586, 605. 

Conde, 437, 558, 560. 



Cond^, Louis (I.), prince of, 333, 335-338, 
340-345, 364. 

Conde, Henry (I.), prince of, 345, 347- 
349, 351, 352, 357, 358. 

Conde, Henry (II.), prince of, 386-389. 

Conde, Louis (II.), prince of, 405, 406, 
410-414, 416, 432, 434-437, 473. 

Conde, other princes, 447, 535, 543, 548. 

Condillac, abbe de, 519. 

Condorcet, marquis of, 519. 

Conllans, 256. 

Congregation, the, 633. 

Conrad III., emperor, 145. 

Consarbriick, battle of, 437. 

Constance, queen, 107, 108. 

Constance, Council of, 223, 224, 278, 309, 
463. 

Constantine, emperor, 29, 30. 

Constantine, captured, 638. 

Constantinople, 129, 130, 145; capture of, 
152, 153; by the Turks, 247. 

Constantius Chlorus, 30. 

Constitution, of 1791, 549 ; of the year III., 
564; of the year VIII., 579, 580; of the 
year X., 587; of the year XU., 590; of 
1814, 624, 632; of 1830, 636; of 1848, 
646-648; of 1852, 649, 650; of 1867-70, 
655, 656; of 1875, 663-666, 673, 674. 

Constitutionalists, 550. 

Consul, title of, 41, 579. 

Consulate, 579-589; for life, 587. 

Conti, princes of, 410, 411, 415, 447, 462, 
535, .543. 

Convulsionnaires, the, 489. 

Convention, the, 519, 553, 555-565. 

Cook, Capt., 529. 

Copenhagen, 585, 604. 

Corbie, 400. 

Cordav, Charlotte, 558. 

Cordeliers, 546, 548, 552. 

Cordova, 75, 168. 

Corneille, 381, 403, 425, 468, 472, 473. 

Cornelius Gallus, 28. 

Cornwallis, Lord, 527. 

Corporations, 168, 209. 

Corps Legislatif, 579, 580, 587, 591, 601, 
611, 619, 649, 655. 

Corsica, 75, 78, 291, 316, 501, 558, 564. 

Cortes, 304. 

Coruna, 606. 

Corvees, 122, 512, 513, 523, 524. 

Cote d'Or, 2. 

Cotentin, 3, 7. 

C oicv GCiitcc 149. 

Council, royal or grand, 79, 80, 181, 182, 
418; of State, 184, 418, 461, 506, 507; of 
Five Hundred, 564, 571, 574, 576, 577; 
of Ancients, 564, 571, 574, 576, 577; of 
State (since 1799), 579, 601, 624, 649, 669. 

Councils, ecclesiastical, in France, 54, 99, 
102, 117, 136, 142, 143, 160, 180, 223, 369, 
463. 

Counts, under the Merovingians, 58, 60; 
under the Carolingiaus, 79, 80, 81, 97, 
98; under the Capetians, 112, 113. 

Coup d'Hat, of 1851, 648, 649. 

Courbet, Adm., 672. 

Court, Merovingian, 58 ; Carolingian, 79, 



INDEX. 



687 



80; of Philip Augustus, 156; of Francis 

I., 303, 325; of Henry III., 354; of 

Louis XIV., 465, 466. 
Courtrai, battle of, 177. 
Courts, civil, 156, 162, 163, 296, 321, 343, 

507, 508, 545, 580, (see Parliament); 

ecclesiastical, 157, 321. 
Cousin, Jean, 327. 
Cousin, "Victor, 633. 
Cousinot, Guillaume, 240. 
Coustou, 477. 
Coutances, 245. 
Coutlion, 558-560. 
Coutras, battle of, 358. 
Coutumes, 244, 274, 296, 508. 
Coysevox, 477. 
Ci-aou, Pierre de, 215, 215. 
CrassuB, 21. 
Crecy, 177, 189, 190. 
Credit Foncier, Credit Mobilier, 651. 
Cremieux, 644. 
Cremona, 452. 
Crespy, peace of, 311. 
Crequi, marshal, 437. 
Crevant, 225. 
Crfevecoeur, 270, 271. 
Crillon, duke of, 527. 
Crimean War, 651-653. 
Cromlechs, 12. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 413. 
Crusades, xx, 110, 129-132, 144-146, 149, 

152-154, 160, 161, 217, 247. 
Cuba, 500. 
Cujas, 328. 
Culloden, 493. 

Cumberland, duke of, 493, 497. 
Custine, Gen., 554, 558, 560, 561. 
Cuvier, 529, 602. 
Cyprus, 160. 

Dagobert I., 59, 61-63, 66, 71. 

Dagobert II., 64, 71. 

Dagobert in., 71. 

D'Alembert, 519, 520. 

Balmatia, 572, 595. 

Damascus, 145. 

Damiens, Franjois, 503. 

Damietta, 160. 

Daraville, 351, 357. 

Dandelot, Sieur, 335. 

Danes, 43, 74. 

Danes, 297, 328. 

D.inte, 166. 

Dautou, 546, 552, 556, 557, 559. 

Danube, 652; Gauls on, 17, 18. 

Danubian Principalities, 652. 

Danzig, 490, 599, 600, 613. 

Dai bov, Msr., 662. 

l)'Arlauae,"530. 

l>aubenton, .529. 

Daun, marshal, 497. 

Dauphin, title, 193. 

Dauphiny, 89, 248, 263; acquired by 

Crown, 193; ravaged, 446. 
David, 002. 
Davout, marshal, 590, 597, 599, 606, 608, 

630. 
" Day of Dupes," 393, 394. 



Deane, Silas, 526. 

Decretals, False, 117. 

Defensor civitatis, 27, 29, 116. 

De Launay, .540, 541, 543. 

Delisle, Guillaume, 476. 

Delorme, Philibert, 326. 

Delphi, 17. 

Deuain, battle of, 457. 

Denis, St., 29. 

Denmark, 309, 399, 414, 438, 527, 585, 604. 

Deols, prince of, 139. 

Departments, 544, 580, 663. 

De Ruyter, admiral, 434, 435, 437. 

Des Adrets, 341. 

Desaix, 570, 583. 

Descartes, 468, 470, 473, 475. 

Desiderius, bishop, 52. 

Desiderius, king of the Lombards, 73, 74. 

Desirade, 500. 

Desmoulins, Camille, 540, 546, 559. 

Dettingen, battle of, 492. 

Devolution, law of, 431, 432. 

Diana of Poitiers, 314. 

Diderot, 519. 

Dieppe, 211, 242, 262, 366. 

Dijon, 40, 293; parliament of, 252, 273. 

Dinant, 257. 

D'lufreville, 397. 

Diocletian, 30. 

Diodorus Siculus, 10. 

Dionysius, 29. 

Directory, the, 566-578. 

Dohna, baron of, 358. 

Dolabella, 16. 

Dolet, Etienne, 328. 

Dolmens, 12. 

Domestici, 58. 

Domfront, 246. 

Dominic, St., 173. 

Dominica, 500, 526. 

Dominicans, 173, 174. 

Domitius Afer, 28. 

Domremy, 228. 

Doneau, 328.- 

Dormans, battle of, 351. 

Dorylaeum, 130. 

Dover, conference of, 433. 

Dragonnades, 443. 

Drama, 330, 331. 

Dresden, treaty of, 493; battle of, 618. 

Dreux, 101, 367 ; battle of, 341. 

Drouet, 548. 

Druidical monuments, 12. 

Druids, 11-13, 28, 29. 

Druses, 653. 

Du Bartas, 331. 

Dubois, abbe, 482, 483, 486. 

Dubois, Pierre, 213. 

Dubourg, Anne, 334. 

Ducange, 474. 

Ducis,~^J. F., 602. 

Duel, judicial, 56, 114, 162; private, 394. 

Dufaur, 334. 

Dufaure, M., 606-669. 

Dugomraier, Gen , 562, 563. 

Duguay-Trouin, 457. 

Duguesclin, Bertraud, 203-208. 

Dukes, under ^[crovingians, 58, 59, 64; 



688 



INDEX. 



under Carolingians, 79, 81, 98; under 

Capetians, 112, 113. 
Dumerbion, G-en., 562. 
Dumoulin, 328. 

Dumouriez, 551, 553, 554, 557, 560. 
Dunes, battle of the, 414. 
Dunkirk, 7, 406, 413, 414, 422, 424, 427, 

431, 458, 459, 481, 561. 
Dunois, ct. of, 226, 227, 232, 236, 240, 241, 

245, 246, 256, 257, 288; (another), 275, 

276. 
Duns Scotus, 171, 174. 
Dupanloup, Mgr., and M. Duruy, xv. 
Dupleix, Fr. J., 494, 495, 499. 
Duplessis-Mornay, 357. 
Dupont, Gen., 606. 
Dupont de I'Eure, 644. 
Duprat, Chancellor, 300, 323. 
Duquesne, Abr., 416, 437, 440, 443, 444. 
Duras, marshal, 445, 446. 
Duroc, grand marshal, 591. 
Duruy, Victor, his career and works, xi- 

xvi. 
Dux, 27. See duke. 

Eastern Question, 639, 640, 651, 652. 

East India Company, 380, 397, 423, 424. 

Eble, Gen., 616. 

Ebroin, 48, 63, 64. 

Eburones, 22. 

Eburovices, 21. 

Eckmubl, battle of, 607. 

Economists, the, 519, 520. 

Ilcouen, edict of, 334. 

Edessa, 132, 145. 

Education, under Charlemagne, 83, 84; 

see Schools; Ferry's bill respecting, 

669, 670. 
Edward I., k. of England, 176. 
Edward II., 184. 
Edward IH., 187-192, 194, 200, 201, 206- 

208. 
Edward IV., 258, 260, 264, 265. 
Edward the Confessor, 127, 128. 
Edward the Black Prince, 194-196, 204- 

207. 
Eginhard, 73, 76, 84. 
Egypt, St. Louis in, 160, 161; sultan of, 

249, 273; Bonaparte in, 572-574, 581, 

585; relations with pasha (khedive), 

637, 639, 640, 671. 
Eighteenth Century, Mignet on, 577, 578. 
El-Arish, convention of, 585. 
Elba, 316, 587: Napoleon at, 622, 625. 
Elboeuf, duke of, 356. 
Eleanor of Guienne, queen, 141, 144, 146. 
Elections, 536, 580, 634, 635, 642, 645, 647, 

660, 666, 670, 674, 677. 
Bligius (St. Eloi), 62. 
Elizabeth, Queen, 317, 341, 344, 357, 366, 

368. 
Elizabeth, dau. of Henry n., 364. 
Elizabeth, czarina, 494, 496, 499. 
Elizabeth, Madame, 548, 558. 
Elliot, Sir G., 528. 
Elster, bridge of the, 619. 
Mus, 197. 
:£2meri, superintendent, 407. 



Emigres, 543, 548, 550, 562, 563, 571, 574, 
586, 589, 625, 634. 

Empire, Eastern, 41, 62, 72, 84; Latin, 
152, 153; French, First, 590-630: Holy 
Roman, ends, 595; Second French, 649, 
650-659, transformed, 655. 

Enghien, dukes of, 311, 543, 589. See 
Conde. 

England, war with, see Hundred Tears' 
War; in 1661, 430; Revolution in, 444; 
alliance with, 481-483; Seven Tears' 
War with, 496-501 ; American war with, 
525-528; war with. Revolutionary and 
Napoleonic, 556, 563, 564, 585, 588, 592, 
593; in 1830, 636; in the Crimea, 652; 
in Mexico, 654. 

Entraigues, Henriette d', 382. 

Epee, abbe de 1', 528. 

fipernon, duke of, 365, 374, 383, 385. 

fipinal, 243. 

Eponina, 30. 

Eresburg, 74. 

Erfurt, conference at, 606. 

Erkenwald, 63. 

Ermenonville, 530. 

Ernest, archduke, 371. 

Esprera^nil, D', 533. 

Essling, battle of, 607. 

Estaing, count d', 526, 527. 

Estiennes, 328. 

Estrees, count d', 437; duke d', 497. 

Estr^es, Gabrielle d', 382, 405. 

Estremadura, 454. 

fitarapes, 256; council of, 142; duchess 
of, 303. 

Etruria, kingdom of, 584. 

Eu, 256. 

Eudes, count of Paris, 95, 96; duke, king, 
100, 101, 186. 

Eudes, count of Blois, 109. 

Eudo, d. of Aquitaine, 68. 

Eugene, Prince, 446, 451-455, 490. 

Eugene de Beauharuais, 592, 604. 

Eugenie de Guzman, empress, 650. 

Eugenius, emperor, 31, 33. 

Eugenius VI., pope, 244. 

Europe, Henry IV. 's plan for reorganiza- 
tion of, 382, 383; state of. in 1661, 430; 

, in 1810, 610, 611. 

Evreux, 245, 256; count of, 136. 

PJxarchate, 72. 

Exilles, 458. 

Bylau, battle of, 599. 

Fabliaux, 172. 

Faidherbe, Gen., 659. 

Falaise, 246. 

Family Compact, 500, 526. 

Famine Compact, 504, 515. 

Fastolf, Sir John, 227. 

Faubourg St. Antoine, battle of, 412; 

insurrections in, 646. 
Favorinns, 28. 
Favre, Jules, 659, 661. 
Federation, Feast of the, 545, 546. 
Fenelon, 464-467, 471, 474, 483, 516. 
Fenestrelle, 458. 
Ferdinand I., emperor, 316. 



INDEX. 



689 



Ferdinand, k. of Aragon, 253, 268, 272, 
281, 284, 286, 289-294, 301, 304. 

Ferdinand VI., k. of Spain, 521. 

Ferdinand VII., k. of Spain, 605, 633, 
637. 

Ferdinand I., k. of Naples, 283-285. 

Ferdinand II., k. of Naples, 285, 286. 

Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick, 498, 552, 
553, 597. 

Fermat, Pierre, 475. 

Ferney, 518. 

Ferrara, 569, 642. 

Ferrette, 264. 

Ferrol, 593. 

Ferry, Jules, 659, 669, 673, 674, 676. 

Fesch, cardinal, 591. 

Feudalism, xx; beginning of, 96-98; de- 
scription of, 111-115, 121-124; decline 
of, 163, 251, 252, 266-270, 320, 321; re- 
vival of, 358, 386-392, 405. 

Feuillade, marshal de la, 478. 

Feuillants, 548. 

Fiefs, 97, 98, 111-114. 

Field of the Cloth of Gold, 305. 

Fieschi's plot, 638. 

Figueras, 563. 

Finance, Carolingian, 80; under Louis 
IX., 164; under Philip IV., 182; under 
the Valois, 201, 202, 209, 210, 244 (see 
also Money); under the Valois-Orleans, 
295, 323; 'under Henry IV., 378, 379; 
under Richelieu, 397, 398; under Maza- 
rin, 407, 414; under Louis XIV., 419- 
421, 459; under Louis XV., 481, 483-485, 
500, 504, 505, 509, 511, 512; under Louis 
XVI., 523-525, 532, 535, 536, 538; during 
the Revolution, 544, 545, 571, 574; under 
Napoleon, 586; under the Third Repub- 
lic, 663, 666. 

Fiuistere, battle off, 593. 

Finland, 600, 604. 

Flanders, county of, 94, 98, 161, 176 ; count 
of, 105, 106, 126, 130, 139, 150, 151, 161, 
209; insurrections in, 141, 177, 178, 183, 
187, 188, 213, 280; united with Bur- 
gundy, 214, 215, 263, 270, 271; Louis 
XIV. claims, 431, 432, 458, 459. 

Fleix, peace of, 355. 

Flesselles, 541, 543. 

Fleurus, battles of, 446, 562. 

Fleury, abbe, 474. 

Fleury, cardinal, 488-492. 

Flodden, 293. 

Floquet, M., 676. 

Floreal, 22d, 574. 

Florence, 253, 288, 289, 302. 

Florida, 397, 501. 

Flushing, 608. 

Foix, counts of, 175, 226, 252. 

Foix, Gaston de, 292, 293. 

Foix, Germaine de, 290. 

Folembray, chateau, 326. 

Fontainebleau, 325, 326, 336, 340, 381, 438, 
479. 

Fontaine-FranQaise, battle of, 373. 

Fontanetum, 89, 99. 

Fontenoy, battle of, 493. 

Foo-Chow, 672, 



" Foolish "War," 280. 

Forez, 2; county of, 98. 

Formosa, 672. 

Fornovo, 286. 

Fortunatus, 47. 

" Forty -five. The," 361. 

Fouch(5, 558, 630. 

Foucquet, Nicolas, 419, 422. 

Foulon, 543. 

Fourmigny, 245. 

Fox, Ch. J., 596. 

Franc archer, 243. 

France, formed, 91; duchy of, 94, 98; 

kingdom of, 105 : national feeling in, 

228; condition in 1515,299,300; in 1689, 

377; in 1683, 441; in 1715, 481; in 1774, 

506-521; in 1812, 611, 612; in 1814, 619. 
France, New, 397. 
Franche-Comte, 175, 181, 264, 265, 270, 284, 

299, 383; invaded by Spain, 373, 398; 

conquered by France, 432, 433, 435, 

438, 440, 458, 459. 
Francis, St., 173, 180. 
Francis de Paul, St., 272. 
FrancisL, (d.of Angouleme),291; (king), 

299-313, 319, 323, 333, 350, 358, 364, 374, 

381. 
Francis II., king, 332-337, 364. 
Francis 11., emp. of Austria, 595. 
Francis H., d. of Brittany, 253-262, 267, 

269, 279, 280, 325. 
Franciscans, 173, 174, 180. 
Francis Joseph, emperor of Austria, 653. 
Franconla, 49. 
Frankfort, declaration of, 619; treaty of, 

661. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 526, 530. 
Franks, 30, 32, 91; established in Gaul, 

33-35, 36; manners and religion, 37; 

political institutions, 38; in the sixth 

century, 55-60; name, in Orient, 132. 
Fraticelli, 180. 
Fraxtnetum, 101. 
Fredegunde, 48-52. 

Frederick I. Barbarossa, emperor, 149. 
Frederick II., emperor, 160, 166. 
Frederick III., emperor, 242, 264, 269, 272. 
Frederick II., k. of Prussia, 491-493, 496- 

501, 518, 521, 527. 
Frederick III., k. of Naples, 289. 
Frederick William 11., k. of Prussia, 550. 
Frederick William III., 585, 595-597, 617. 
Frederick Charles, prince, 660. 
Freemasonry, 530. 
Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 406, 437. 
Freiburg (Swiss), 265, 302. 
Frejus, 26, 574. 
French language, 89. 
Freret, 515. 

Freycinet, M. de, 669, 674, 676. 
Friars, 173. 

Friedland, battle of, 599, 600. 
Friedlingen, battle of, 452. 
Frisia, 69, 95. 
Prisons, 62, 67, 68, 69. 
Friuli, 75, 572. 
Froissart, 191, 210, 214. 
Fronde, the, 409-413. 



690 



INDEX. 



Frontenac, count, 448. 
Fructidor, 18th, 571, 576. 
Fuentes, 373 ; count of, 431. 
Fuentes d'Onoro, 017. 
Fulk Nerra, 109, 126. 
Fulk of Nenilly, 152. 
Furnes, 142, 176. 
Fiirstenberg, cardinal, 441. 

Gabelle, 192. 

Gabriel, Ange, 520. 

Gaeta, 78. 

Gaguin, 297. 

Gaillon, 297. 

Galatia, Galatians, 18. 

Galeswintha, 49. 

Galiani, abbe, 515. 

GaligaT, Leonora, 386, 390. 

Gall, St., 69. 

Gallia Belgica, 21, 24, 26, 30. 

Gallia Celtica, 26. 

Gallia Lugdunensis, 26. 

Gallia NarbonenBis, 22, 23. 

Gallo-Romans, 40, 42, 53, 55, 56, 57, 91. 

Galvani, 529. 

Gambetta, Leon, 659, 660, 667, 668, 670, 
671. 

Garamond, 328. 

Garde mobile, 645. 

Garibaldi, 660. 

Garnier-Pagfes, 644, 645. 

Garonne, 4, 7. 

Gascons, 62. 

Gascony, 75; duchy of, 94, 98, 139; es- 
tates of, 205, 206. 

Gatinais, 110. 

Gatian, 29. 

Gaul, primitive populations of, 9; state 
of, in early times, 10-13; in B.C. 58, 13, 
14; beginning of Roman conquest of, 
19; Cassar's conquest of, 24; a prov- 
ince, 25; under the Romans, 26-33; 
prefecture, 27; civilization, 27, 28; 
Christianity in, 28, 29; in 481, 36; in 
the sixth century, 53-60. 

Gauls, their origin, 9; characteristics, 
religion, government, etc., 10-14; cap- 
ture Rome, 15; fight Rome, 16; invade 
Greece, 17; Galatia, 18; conquered by 
the Romans, 19-25 ; under the empire, 
26-33. 

Gay-Lussac, 603. 

Gelasius II., pope, 142. 

Gelderland, 434; duke of, 215, 264, 272. 

Genabum, 22, 23. 

Geneva, 302, 334. 

Genevifeve, Ste., 39, 42. 

Gennep, 249. 

Genoa, 168, 283, 285, 301, 440, 570; con- 
quered, 291; freed, 293; again acquired, 
302, 319; siege of, 582, 610. 

Genoese, 190, 501. 

Gensonne, 550, 557. 

Geoffrey Martel, 109. 

Geoffrey Plantagenet, ct. of Anjou, 141. 

Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 603. 

George I., k. of England, 458. 

George XL, 489, 493. 



Gergovia, 22, 23. 

Germans, 20, 30, 32, 38, 58; Charlemagne 
and, 76. 

Germany, kingdom of, 90, 102, 105 ; under 
Hapsburgs, 319; after Thirty Years' 
War, 407, 430; and Napoleon, 587, 588, 
606, 609, 611, 617-619; war with, 657-661; 
empire of, 661. 

Gex, 631. 

Ghent, 77, 142, 213, 257, 270, 271, 310, 438, 
455, 493. 

Gibraltar, 454, 458, 488, 489, 527, 528. 

Giocondo, Fra, 297. 

Girardin, marquis de, 530. 

Girardon, 477, 478. 

Girondists, 550, 551, 555-557. 

Giroud de Villette, 530. 

Gledsdale, Wm., 227. 

Gloucester, d. of, 225, 226. 

Gobelins, tapestry of, 422. 

Godefroy, Denis, 328. 

Godegisel, 40. 

Godfrey of Bouillon, xix, 130-132. 

Godolphin, Lord, 451. 

Godoy, 604, 605. 

Goethe, 554. 

Goletta, La, 308. 

Gonsalvo de Cordova, 289, 290. 

Goree, 424, 528. 

Goths, .34, 72; East Goths, West Goths, 
see Ostrogoths, "Visigoths. 

Gottschalk, 119. 

Goujon, Jean, 326, 327. 

Gournay, 519. 

Gozlin, bishop, 95. 

Graraont, duke of, 492, 657. 

Grammont, countess of, 358. 

Granson, 265. 

Granville, 562. 

Grasse, count de, 527. 

Gratian, 30. 

Grave, 436. 

Gravelines, 305. 

Gravelotte, battle of, 658. 

Greece, Gallic invasions of, 17; revolu- 
tion in, 634. 

Greeks, in Gaul, 10, 14, 91. 

Gregory of Tours, 40, 42, 50. 

Gregory the Great, pope, 69. 

Gregory VII., pope, 125, 126, 127, 128, 142. 

Gregory XIII., pope, 356. 

Gregory XIV., pope, 369. 

Grenada, 500, 527. 

Grenadines, the, 500. 

Grenoble, 8, 340, 534, 625, 637; parliament 
of, 244, 252, 273, 375, 442, 514. 

Grevy, Jules, President, 668, 674-670. 

Grirawald, 63, 66, 69, 104. 

Grisons, the, 398-400. 

" Groans of Enslaved France," 467. 

Gros, 602. 

Grouchy, marshal, 627-629. 

Guadeloupe, 423, 495, 500, 564. 

Guadet, 550. 

Guastalla, duke of, 399 ; duchess of, 596. 

Guebriant, ct. of, 401, 402, 405. 

Guerande, treaty of, 204. 

Guichen, count de, 527, 



INDEX. 



691 



Guienne, duchy of, 160, 162, 175, 176, 260, 
272, 314, 352; acquired by France, 246; 
duke of, 261, 267. 

Guinea, 211. 

Guinegate, 270, 293. 

Guinea, 201, 256, 305. 

Guise, house of, 320, 333, 349, 351, 353; 
Claude, ct. and d. of, 306, 333; Francis, 
duke of, 314-317, 333, 335, 336, 338, 340- 
343; Jean, cardinal, 333; Charles of, 
abp. and cardinal, 314, 333, 335, 339, 840, 
361; Henry, d. of, 347, 351-356, 358-361; 
Henry, d. of, 365, 369, 373, 374. 

Guiton, 393. 

Guizot, M., 633, 637, 639-642. 

Guudebald, 39, 40, 44. 

Guudemar, 44. 

Gunpowder, 193. 

Guntram, 48, 49, 51, 71. 

Gustavus Adolphus, k. of Sweden, 399, 
400. 

Guyon, Madame, 464. 

Hachette, Jeanne, 262. 

Hadrian, see Adrian. 

Haganon, 102. 

Hagenau, 437. 

Hainault, 270. 

Ham, chateau of, 646. 

Hamburg, 612. 

Hannibal, 16. 

Hanoi, 672. 

Hanover, 497, 589, 595, 596. 

Hanse, 168. 

Hapsburgs, see Austria, house of. 

Harcourt, ct. of, 195; (another), 401. 

Hardouin-Mausard, see Mansard. 

HarEeur, 220, 313. 

Harlay, President de, 328, 362. 

Haro, Don Luis de, 414. 

Harold, k. of England, 127, 128. 

Haroun-al-Raschid, 84. 

Hasbain, 218. 

Hasting, 92, 93, 94, 95. 

Hastings, battle of, 128. 

Haiiy, Rent^ Just, 602. 

Haiiy, Valentin, 529. 

Havana, 500. 

Havre, 5, 7, 312, 313, 341, 342, 397, 424, 427. 

Hayti, 588. 

Hubert, Hebertists, 558, 559. 

Heidelberg, 446. 

Heinsius, 451. 

lleliopolis, battle of, 585. 

Hfloisc, 143. 

Helvetia, 69. 

Helvetian Republic, 584, 592, 604. 

Helvetii, 20. 

Helvetius, 519. 

Plenrietta Maria, q. of England, 392, 409. 

Henry I., king, 107, 108, 109, 186. 

Henry H., 314-323, 332, 333, 334, 346, 364, 

381 
Henry HI. (d. of Anjou), 345-347, 349; 

(king) , 350-364. 
Henry IV. (k. of Navarre), 344-349, 351, 

352, 355-358, 362-364; (k. of France), 

365-385, 397, 433. 



Henry V., see Chambord, count of. 

Henry I., k. of England, 140, 141. 

Henry II., of England, 141, 146. 

Henry III., of England, 155, 161. 

Henry V., of England, 220-223. 

Henry VI., of England, 225, 236, 242, 246. 

Henry VII., of England, 279, 281, 284, 
286. 

Henry VIII., of England, 292, 294, 304, 
.305, 307-309, 311, 312. 

Henry V., emperor, 141. 

Henry d'Albret, k. of Navarre, 305. 

Henry, duke, 96. 

Henry of Burgundy, xix, 128. 

Henry of Trastamare, 205, 206. 

Jlenry the Deacon, 153. 

Herbert, count of Vermandois, 102. 

Heretics, 108, 149, 310, 312. 

Hermanfried, 43, 44. 

Herrings, Battle of the, 227, 228. 

Hesdin, 34, 315. 

Hesse-Cassel, 600 ; landgrave of, 400, 414, 
610. 

Hesus, 11. 

Hildebrand, see Gregory VII. 

Hincmar, 79, 118, 119. 

Hoche, Gen., 561-563, 566, 570-572. 

Hochkirch, battle of, 498. 

Hochstadt, battles of, 453. 

Hohenfriedberg, 493. 

Hohenlinden, battle of, 584. 

Hohenlohe, prince, 597, 598. 

Holbaoh, baron, 519. 

Holland, see Netherlands; kingdom of, 
596, 604, 610, 612. 

Holy League, 292, 293, 307. See League. 

Homage, 113. 

Hondschoote, battle of, 561. 

Honfleur, 313. 

Honorius, 30, 31, 33. 

Hospitallers, 133, 585. 

Hotel de Ville, 381, 540, 569, 662. 

Hotman, Frangois, 328. 

Houchard, Gen., 561. 

Hougoumont, 627, 628. 

Hovas, 671, 672. 

Howard, Sir Edward, 294. 

Howe, admiral lord, 626. 

Hubertusburg, treaty of, 601. 

Hudson's Bay territory, 458. 

Hugh Capet, 105, 107, 186. 

Hugh the Great, duke, 102, 103, 105, 186. 

Hugh, son of k. Robert, ]07. 

Huguenots, 309, 310, 334, 336, 339; civil 
wars of, 340-363 (see Nantes, Edict of) ; 
under Louis XIII., .390-393; under 
Louis XIV., 442-444, 463, 466; subse- 
quently, 487, 511, 514, 544. 

Humbercourt, sieur d', 259. 

Humbert II., dauphin of Vicnne, 193. 

Humieres, seigneur d', 352. 

Hunald, 73. 

Hundred Days, the, 626-630. 

Hundred Years' War, the, 148, 187-246. 

Hungarians, 91, 102. 

Hungary, 129, 217, 458, 647. 

Huns, 34, 35. 

Hus, John, 224. 



692 



INDEX. 



Huyghens, 476, 
Hyder-Ali, 527. 

Iberians, 9, 10. 

Ibrahim Pasha, 639. 

Iconium, sultan of, 130. 

lle-de-France, 106, 109. 

Illyria, 608. 

Illuminism, 530. 

Immunities, 60, 82. 

Imperialists, in Germany, 399, 401, 405, 

553. 
Importants, the, 405. 
India, French in, 423, 424, 494, 495, 499, 

613. 
Industry, 14, 28, 133, 164, 168, 323, 380, 

398, 421, 422, 443, 512, 513, 602, 642, 644, 

650. 
Indutiomarus, 22. 
Ingeborg, queen, 155. 
Ingelheim, 83. 
Inkerman, battle of, 652. 
Innocent II., pope, 142. 
Innocent III., pope, 149, 152-155, 159, 166. 
Innocent IV., pope, 160, 166. 
Innocent XI., pope, 440-442, 463. 
Innocent XII., pope, 463. 
Innsbriick, 315, 452. 
Inquisition, 174, 336, 355, 359, 370, 376, 

606. 
Institute of France, 565. 
Insubres, 15, 16. 
Intendants, 396, 397, 413, 466. 
" International," The, 661. 
Invalides, Hotel des, 426, 540. 
Investiture, 113, 117, 142. 
Ionian Isles, 572, 600. 
Ireland, French invasion of, 445. 
Irenseus, St., 29. 
Irene, empress, 84. 
Irminsul, 74. 
Isaac Angelos, 152. 
Isabella of Bavaria, queen, 217, 219, 221- 

223, 225. 
Isabella of Hainault, queen, 149. 
Isabella, queen of England, 187. 
Isabella, daughter of k. John, 201. 
Isabella, infanta, 371. 
Isambart de la Pierre, Brother, 235, 236. 
Isle de France, see Mauritius. 
Istria 572 595 
Italy,'45,'73, 74, 342, 430; kingdom of, 

86, 96; French -wars in, 283-307, 399; 

Bonaparte's, 567-571; Napoleon, king 

of, 592, 604, 610; unification of, 653. 
Ivry, battle of, 367. 

Jacca, count of, 91. 

Jacobins, 536, 546, 548, 552, 559, 560, 571, 

576, 581. 
Jacquart, 602. 

Jacqueline of Hainault, 226. 
Jacquerie, 198, 199, 213. 
Jacques de ChtoUon, 177. 
Jaffa, 132. 

Jagerndorf, Gross-, battle of, 497. 
Jamaica, 414, 527. 
James II., k. of England, 444, 446, 450. 



James (Old Pretender), 450, 458, 481,482, 

495. 
James IV., k. of Scots, 293. 
James V., 333. 
Jamyn, 331. 
Jansenists, xxviii, 461, 463, 464, 487, 489, 

502, 503. 
Jansenius, 464. 
January, Edict of, 339. 
Japan, 654. 

Jardin des Plantes, 403, 425. 
Jarnac, battle of, 345. 
Jeanne, dau. of Louis XI., 269, 275, 287. 
Jeanne d'Albret, q. of ISTavarre, 318, 333, 

344, 345-347. 
Jeanne d'Arc, 228-236, 300. 
Jeanne of Montfort, 189. 
Jeanne of Penthievre, 188, 204. 
Jemmapes, 554. 
Jena, battle of, 597. 
Jerome, St., 18. 
Jerome of Prague, 224. 
Jerusalem, Assizes of, xix, 132. 
Jerusalem, patriarch of, 76; pilgrimages 

to, 126; captured by Turks, 129; by 

crusaders, 131; kingdom of, 132, 145; 

lost, 159. 
Jesuits, xxviii, 334, 339, 343, 352, 383; 

suppressed, 501-503; return, 633; 

schools, 669, 670. 
Jews, 108, 129, 149, 159, 170, 177, 183, 192, 

202, 511, 544. 
Jodelle, E., 331. 
John, infant king, 183. 
John, king, xxiv, 194-202, 364. 
John XXIII., pope, 224. 
John, k. of Bohemia, 190. 
John, k. of England, 149, 150, 154, 155. 
John of Braganza, k. of Portugal, 401. 
John, archduke, 607. 
John of Montfort, 188, 189, 204. 
John v., ct. of Armagnac, 248, 252, 255, 

256, 260, 261, 267. 
John IV., d. of Brittany, 208. 
John, ct. of Angouleme, 364. 
John the Fearless, d. of Burgundy, 217- 

223, 226, 237, 238, 364. 
John of Luxemburg, 232. 
Joinville, sire de, xxi, 160, 163, 172, 173; 

priuce of, 643 ; treaty of, 356. 
Joseph I., emperor, 456. 
Joseph II., emperor, 521, 524. 
Joseph, Pere, 399. 
Josephine de Beauharnais, 576; empress, 

691, 592, 609. 
Joubert, Gen., 569, 570, 574. 
Jourdan, Gen., 558, 561-563, 566-570, 575, 

590. 
Joyeuse, duke of, 358, 374. 
Judiciary, see Courts. 
Judith, empress, 88, 89, 91. 
Julian, 30, 33. 
Julich, 383, 385. 
Julius II., pope, 291-293. 
July, Edict of, 339; Revolution of, 635; 

Monarchy, 635-643. 
Jumonville, 496. 
Junot, Gen., 604, 606. 



INDEX. 



693 



Jura, 5, 6, 7. 

Jussieu, IJernard de, 520. 

Jussieu, Lauieut de, 529. 

Kaiserswerth, 441. 
Kant, 521. 

Karl, see Charles Martel and Charle- 
magne. 
Kehl, 490. 

Kellermann, 553, 591. 
Kempen, 402. 
Keppel, admiral, 526. 
Kesseldorf , 493. 
Kharesmians, 159. 

Kiersy-Bur-Oise, capitulary of, 94, 95, 111. 
Kingship, see Royalty. 
Klagenf urt, 570. 
Kleber, Gen., 562, 574, 585. 
Kloster-Zeven, capitulation of, 497. 
Knighthood, 133, 1.34. 
Kollin, battle of, 497. 
Konigsberg, 498, 599, 600, 618. 
Korner, 617. 
Krasnoi, 616. 
Kray, marshal, 582, 
Krefeld, battle of, 498. 
Kremlin, 615. 
Kunersdorf, battle of, 498. 
Kutusof, marshal, 614, 615, 617. 
Kyriel, Thomas, 245. 

Labedoyfere, Gen., 625, 632. 

Labienus, 22, 23. 

La Bourdonnaie, M. de, 635. 

La Bourdonnais, 494, 495. 

La Bruyfere, 417, 471, 515. 

Lacaillc, 520. 

La Charite, 346, 348. 

La Condamine, 520. 

" Ladies' Peace," 308. 

La Fayette, 526, 536, 541, 542, 546, 549, 

552, 636. 
La Ferte-Bernard, 226. 
Laffitte, M., 636. 
La Fontaine, 416, 468, 473. 
La Garde, baron de, 316. 
Lagny, 368. 
Lagos, battle off, 448. 
Lagrange, 602. 
La Haie-Sainte, 628. 
La Hire, 226. 
La Hogue, Cape, 445. 
Lally, count, 499. 
Lally-Tollendal, marquis of, -536. 
La Marche, 175, 181 ; house of, 364. 
Lamartine, 644, 645. 
La Meilleraye, duke of, 415. 
Lamettrie, 519. 
Lamotte, countess of, 531. 
Lancaster, duke of (John of Gaunt), 208. 
Lancelot, 474. 
Land, tenure of, in Merovingian times, 

55, 56, 59, 60. 
Landau, 427, 448, 458, 459, 631. 
Landrecies, 401, 457. 
Landshut, 607. 
Lanfranc, 119, 120. 
Langeais, 281. 



Langres, 28. 

Lang-son, 672. 

Languedoc, 194, 392 ; canal of, 422. 

Languedoc canal, 4, 6, 7. 

Lannes, marshal, 590, 594, 599. 

Lannoy, 306. 

La Noue, 366. 

Laon, 102, 137, 373, 620; bishop of, 106, 
197 215 

La Palice] 293, 301, 307. 

La Perouse, 529. 

Laplace, 602. 

La Renaudie, 335. 

La Reveillfere-Lepeaux, 566. 

La Rochefoucauld, 347; duke of, 405, 410, 
468, 469, 472, 473. 

La Rochefoucauld-Llancourt, duke of, 
536, 541. 

La Roche-sur-Yon, 364. 

Lateran Council, 154; (another), 292. 

Latin Empire, 153. 

La Tremouille, 252, 280, 293, 306, 307, 320, 
365. 

Laudon, baron, 498. 

Lauingen, battle of, 406. 

Lautrec, marshal, 301, 305, 306, 308. 

Lavalette, Pere, 502. 

Lavoisier, 528, 558. 

Law, John, 483-485. 

Lave, barbarian, 56, 57; Carolingian, 82, 
83; Roman, 167, 168; French, 244, 274, 
296, 328, 428, 507, 508; reforms of, by 
National Assembly, 543-545; by Napo- 
leon, 601. 

Lawfeld, battle of, 494. 

League, Holy, in religious wars, 344, 352- 
363, 365-375, 377. 

Lebas, 559, 561. 

Lebrun, consul, 579, 590. 

Lebrun, painter, 416, 469, 476-478. 

Leclerc,'Gen., .577, 588. 

Lectoure, 181, 267. 

Ledru-Roliin, 644, 645. 

Lee, Arthur, 526. 

Lefebvre d'Etaples, 309, 328. 

Leger, St., 64. 

Legion of Honor, 586, 591, 592. 

Legists, 167, 168. 

Legitimists, 662, 671. 

Leipzig, 400 ; battle of, 618, 619. 

Le Mans, 42, 94, 95, 137, 216, 562, 660. 

Lemercier, 478. 

Leraovices, 26. 

Lenoir, Richard, 602. 

Le Notre, 478. 

Leo III., pope, 76. 

Leo IX., pope, 127. 

Leo X., pope, 293, 294, 301, 302. 

Leoben, preliminaries of, 670. 

Leopold I., emperor, 430, 435, 441, 449, 
450, 456. 

Leopold II. (grind duke), 521 ; (emperor), 
548, 5r)0. 

Leopold, archduke, 406, 413. 

Leopold, prince of HohenzoUern-Sigma- 
ringen, 657. 

Le Pelletier, 442. 

Leprevost de Beaumont, 515. 



694 



INDEX. 



L^rida, 406. 

Les Chapelles, count of, 394. 

Lescot, Pierre, 326, 478. 

Lescun, sire de, 262, 263. 

Lesdiguieres, marshal, 357. 

Lesseps, M. de, 654. 

L'Estoile, 350. 

Lesueur, 468, 476. 

Le Tellier, Michel, 418, 419, 425, 426, 

443. 
Letourneur, 566. 
Letters, Revival of, 327-331. 
Lettres de Cachet, 408, 485, 504, 514. 
Leudes, 43, 50, 51, 56, 60, 61, 64, 67. 
Levant Company, 42.3. 
Lexovii, 21. 
L'Hopital, Michel de, 328, 336-340, 343, 

344, 348, 358, 375. 
Library, Royal, 210, 425; Mazarin, 425. 
Liege, Liegeois, 218, 257, 259, 4? 4. 
Liegnitz, battle of, 498. 
Ligny, battle of, 627. 
Ligug(5, 54, 118. 
Ligurian Republic, 570, 574. 
Ligurians, 19. 
Lille, 142, 427, 432, 455, 561, 570; defence 

of, 554. 
Limburg, 257. 

Limoges, 26, 43, 155; sack of, 207. 
Limousin, 2, 195. 
Lingendes, Jean de, 469. 
Linz, 491. 

Lionne, Hugues de, 418, 429, 4.34. 
Lisaine, battle at the, 660. 
Lisbon, 604. 
Lisieux, 245. 
Lit de justice, 533. 

Literature, 172, 173, 210, 297, 468-475, 479. 
Litus, 56. 

Lobau, count, 628, 629. 
Lobau, island, 607. 
Lobositz, 497. 
Lodi, battle of, 568. 
Loire, valley of, 3, 7. 
Lombards, 48, 49, 69; Pippin and the, 

72; Charlemagne conquers, 74, 76; 

bankers, 177, 184. 
Lonato, battle of, 568. 
London, treaty of (1514), 294; (1840), 

640. 
Londonderry, 445. 
Longjumeau, peace of, 344. 
Longueville, dukes of, 348, 366, 386, 387, 

410, 411. 
Longwood, 6.30. 
Longwy, 427, 448, 552, 553. 
Lorges, duke of, 446. 
Lorient, 495. 
Lorraine, 89, 94, 95, 96, 101, 103, 107, 265, 

383, 402; occupied by France, 407, 414; 

restored, 448; house of, 226; dukes of, 

256, 264, 266, 269, 276, 365, 367, 373, 395, 

435, 436; cardinal of, 333, 335, 339, 340, 

.361; given to Stanislas, 490; falls to 

France, 501, 511: ceded, 661. 
Lorris, Guillaume de, 172. 
Lothair I., emperor, 87-90,94, 104. 
Lothair, k. of France, 103, 104, 



Lotharingia, 89, 94, 101, 109. 

Loudun, treaty of, 389. 

Louis I. the Pious, 86-89, 92, 104. 

Louis the German, 87-90, 94, 104. 

Louis II., emperor, 94, 104. 

Louis II., the Stammerer, king, 95, 104. 

Louis III., 95, 104. 

Louis, k. of Burgundy, 100. < 

Louis IV., d'Outremer, king, 102, 103, 

104. 
Louis v., 103, 104. 
Louis VI., the Fat, 136, 137, 139-142, 146, 

186. 
Louis VII, the Young, 144-147, 186. 
Louis VIII., 150, 186. 
Louis IX. (St. Louis), 159-165, 186, 230. 
Louis X., 183-186. 
Louis XL, (dauphin), 241-244, 248, 249; 

(king), 251-275, 282, 284, 294, 296, 364. 
Louis XII. (duke of Orleans), 269, 275, 

276, 278-280, 285; (king), 287-298, 303, 

364. 
Louis XIII. , 385-403. 
Louis XIV., XXV, xxvi, 322; minority of, 

404-415: internal administration of, 

416-429; foreign affairs and wars, to 

1679, 430-439; reign, to 1715, 440-459; 

government of, 460-467; age of, 468- 

479, 480. 
Louis, dauphin, 445, 449, 459. 
Louis, d. of Burgundy, 455, 459, 466, 471. 
Louis XV., 459; minority of, 480-486; 

reign of, 487-505; France at end of reign 

of, 506-521. 
Louis, dauphin, 502. 
Louis XVI., reign, to 1789, 522-534; and 

the Revolution, 537-543, 546-552, 555, 

556. 
Louis (XVII.), dauphin, 548, 571. 
Louis XVIII. , 571, 621, 624, 625, 631-633. 
Louis Philippe, king, 635-643. 
Louis, count of Flanders, 213, 214. 
Louis, d. of Orleans, see Orleans, and 

Louis XII. 
Louis of Bourbon, bp. of Liege, 259. 
Louis Napoleon, prince imperial, 662, 

669. 
Louisbourg, 494. 
Louise of Savoy, regent, 301, 303, 307, 

308. 
Louise, q. of Prussia, .597. 
Louisiana, 423, 484, 495, 496, 501, 588. 
Lourdis, archbishop, 401. 
Louvel, 633. 
Louviers, 245. 
Louvois, marquis of, 416, 419, 425, 426, 

429, 436, 443, 446, 462. 
Louvre, 157, 198, 207, 210, 326, 381, 478, 

602, 630, 662. 
Low Countries, see Netherlands. 
Liibeck, 598, 612. 
Lucca, Eliza, duchess of, .596. 
Lugdunum, 26. 
Liigenfeld, 88. 
LuUi, 469, 473, 476-478. 
Luna, 93. 

Lun^ville, peace of, 584. 
Lupus, duke, 75. 



INDEX. 



695 



Lutetia, 23, 28, 30. 

Luther, 309, 333. 

Lutzen, 400, 617. 

Luxembourg, marshal, 434, 435, 437, 438, 
445-448. 

Luxembourg, palace, 577, 662. 

Luxemburg, 305, 311, 440, 639; duke of, 
386; question of, 657. 

Luynes, Albert de, 390, 391. 

Luzern, 265. 

Luzzara, 452. 

Lyons, 5, 6, 8, 26, 28, 168 ; capital of Gaul, 
26; schools of, church in, 28, 29; coun- 
cil of, 160; passes to crown, 181; in- 
dustry of, 323, 422; in religious wars, 
340, 348, 356; in the Revolution, 558, 
561; since, 620, 637, 638. 

Maastricht, 435, 436, 494. 

Mabillon, 474. 

Mably, abbt5, 519. 

Macdonald, marshal, 575, 584, 608. 

Macedonia, Grallic invasion of, 17. 

Machault, 492, 495, 501, 517. 

Mack, Gen., 594. 

MacMahou, Gen., 653; marshal, 658, 662; 

president, 664-668. 
Mslcon, 238. 

Madagascar, 423, 424, 671, 672. 
"Madame," 278,470. 
Madeleine, 602. 

Mademoiselle (of Orleans), 412. 
Madras, 495. 
Madrid, 454, 606; treaty of, 307, 308; 

chateau, 326. 
Maeander, battle of, 145. 
Magdeburg, 600. 
Magenta, battle of, 653. 
Magna Charta, 154. 
Magnesia, 18. 
Magnetism, animal, 530. 
Mahomet II., 247. 
Maillotins, 212, 213. 
Maine, 109, 155, 272, 278, 289; duke of, 

459, 481, 482; duchess of, 482. 
Maine de Biran, 602. 
Mainmortables, 121. 
Maintenon, Madame de, 416, 452, 466. 
Mainz, 28, 83, 406, 554, 558, 560, 561. 
Maison, Gen., 620. 
Maisou Cavree, 27. 
Maistre, J. and X. de, 602. 
Majorca, k. of, 187, 193. 
Major domus, 58, 63. 
Malebranche, 474. 
Malesherbes, Lamoignon de, 514, 522, 

524, 555, 558. 
Malherbe, F. de, 331, 381, 472. 
Malo-.Taroslavetz, battle of, 615. 
Malplaquet, battle of, 455, 456. 
Malta, 572, .581, .585, 588. 
Mamelukes, 160, 572, 573. 
Mandats, 571. 
Manfred, king, 161. 
Manilla, 500. 
Manlius, 16, 18. 
Mannheim, 445. 
Mans, Le, see Le Mans. 



Mansard, Francois, 476, 477. 

Mansard, Jules Hardouin, 416, 469, 476- 

478. 
Mausfeld, Count, 392. 
Mansourah, battle of, 160. 
Mantes, 110, 203, 204, 245, 371, 372. 
Manteuffel, Gen., 660. 
Mantua, 452, 568, 569; duke of, 400,440; 

conference of, 548. 
Mantuan Succession, War of, 399. 
Manuel I., emperor, 145. 
Marat, 546, 551, 552, 557, 558. 
Marcel, fitienne, 196-200, 213. 
Marches, 75, 81. 
Mardyk, 481. 

Marengo, battle of, 583, 585. 
Marey, 228. 
Margaret of Anjou, q. of England, 242, 

246. 
Margaret of Scotland, queen, 242. 
Margaret of Austria, dau. of Maximilian, 

271, 308. 
Margaret of Valois, q. of Henry IV., 329, 

346, 364, 383. 
Margaret Theresa, empress, 449. 
Maria Anna, empress, 449. 
Maria Louisa, empress, 609. 
Maria Theresa, empress, 488, 491-493, 

496, 497, 531. 
Maria Theresa, infanta and queen, 414, 

431, 432. 
Maria da Gloria, Donha, 637. 
Marie Antoinette, queen, 531, 532, 535, 

542, 548, 558. 
Marie of Anjou, queen, 225. 
Marie Leszczynski, queen, 487, 502. 
Marie, M., 645. 
Marie Galante, island, 500. 
Marienburg, 631. 
Marienthal, battle of, 406. 
Mariguano, 301, 302. 
Marillac, brothers, 394, 395. 
Ji[ariotte, abb<i, 475. 
Mariuj, 19, 20. 

Marlborough, duke of, 451, 453-456; duch- 
ess of, 451, 456. 
Marly, 479. 

Marmont, marshal, 617, 621. 
Marmousets, 215. 
Marmoutiers, 54. 
Maronites, 653. 
Marot, Clt^ment, 309, 331, 381. 
Marsaglia, battle of, 446. 
Marseilles, 5, 7, 28, 263; founded, 10; 

trade of, 14, 168, 422, 495; aided by 

Rome, 19; sieges of, 306, 310; pestilence 

in, 486. 
Marsiu, marshal, 453, 454. 
Mars-la-Tour, battle of, 658. 
Martial, bishop, 29. 
Martignac, M. de, 634. 
Martin, St., 29, 54, 118, 126. 
Martin V., pope, 224, 244. 
Martin, mayor, 64. 
Martinique, 423, 495, 500, 564. 
Mary of Burgundy, 264, 269, 270, 271, 364. 
Mary of England, q. of Louis XII., 294, 

298. 



696 



INDEX. 



Mary of Guise, q. of Scotland, 309, 314. 
Mary de' Medici, q. of France, 383, 385- 

387, 390, 392, 394. 
Mary Tudor, q. of England, 316, 317. 
Mary Stuart, q. of France, 333, 336; q. of 

Scotland, 337, 344, 357. 
Mary (II.), q. of England, 438. 
Mass^na, marshal, 567, 569, 570, 575, 581, 

582, 590, 593, 594, 606, 608, 613, 617. 
Massieu, bailiff, 235. 
Massillon, 470. 
Matilda, empress, 141. 
Maubeuge, 401, 427, 561. 
Maup^ou, chancellor, 502-504, 522. 
Maupertius, 520. 
Maurepas, couut of, 522-525. 
Maurice of Nassau, pr. of Orange, 368, 

369. 
Maurice of Saxony, 315. 
Mauritius, island, 494. 
Maximian, 30. 
Maximilian (archduke), 264, 269-271, 279- 

281; (emperor), 284, 286, 290-293, 301, 

304, 364. 
Maximilian, emp. of Mexico, 655. 
Mayenoe, see Mainz. 
Mayenne, duke of, 356, 361, 362, 365-371, 

374, 386, 387. 
Mayor of the palace, 58, 61, 62, 63. 
Mazarin, Cardinal, 399, 403-405, 407-409, 

411-415, 417. 
Meaux, 101, 199, 223, 242, 312, 348. 
Medard, 46. 

Medici, Catherine de', see Catherine. 
Medici, Cosmo de', 283. 
Medici, Lorenzo de', 272, 283. 
Medici, Mary de'. See Mary. 
Medici, Piero de', 283, 285. 
Medicine, Royal Society of, 529; schools 

of, 565. 
Mehemet Ali, 639, 640. 
Mehun-sur-Yfevre, 225. 
Melas, baron, 582, 583. 
Melun, 223. 
Menhirs, 12. 
Menou, Gen., 585. 

Mercosur, dukes of, 356, 367, 375, 405, 415. 
Mercure de France, 396. 
Mercy, 406. 
Meroveus, 34, 35, 38, 71; son of Chilperic, 

50. 
Merovingian period, 36-71 ; government, 

57, 58; kings, genealogical table of, 71. 
Mersen, edict of, 92, 93, 111. 
Meru, 351. 

Mery-sur-Seine, 34, 35. 
Mesmer, 530. 
Messina, 437. 
Metric System, 565. 
Metz, 242, 243, 407, 427, 440; kings of, 

43, 48; bishops of, 66; sieges of, 315, 

333, 342 ; parliament of, 396 ; in German 

War, 658, 659, 661. 
Meudon, 362. 
Meulan, 204. 
Meung, Jehan de, 172. 
Meuse, 3. 



Mexico, expeditions to, 638, 654, 655. 

Mezeray, 474. 

Mezieres, 305. 

Michael Angelo, 324, 325. 

Middle Ages, end of, 250. 

Miguel, Dom, 637. 

Milan, Milanese, 305, 310-312, 458, 570, 

642; French wars for, 288-290, 319; 

duke of, 253 (see Sforza) ; Napoleon 

at, 583 ; Decree of, 612, 613. 
Minden, battle of, 498. 
Ministers of state, 418, 419, 507. 
Minorca, 458, 496, 500, 527, 528. 
Minsk, 615, 616. 
Miquelon, island, 500, 528. 
Mirabeau, Count, 536, 539, 544, 546, 547. 
Missi dominlci, 79, 81, 97, 116. 
Mississippi Scheme, 484, 485. 
Modena, duchess of, 415; duke of, 450, 

568,610; regency of, 569. 
Mogadore, 641. 
Mohammedans, 68. 
Molay, Jacques du, 181. 
Mole, President Mathieu, 409. 
Mole, M., 638. 

Moliere, 416, 425, 463, 468, 469, 472, 473. 
Mollwitz, battle of, 491. 
Moltke, Count von, 660. 
Monasteries, in sixth century, 54, 55, 87; 

in the eleventh, 118, 119. 
Moncey, marshal, 563, 590. 
Moncontour, 346. 
Money, 164, 193, 194. 
Monge, 602. 
Mons, 446. 
Mons-en-Puelle, 178. 
"Monsieur," 352,396, 438; the peace of, 

352. 
Montagnards, 550, 555, 557, 558. 
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, 329, 330. 
Montargis, 226. 
Montauban, 346, 349, 391. 
Montbazon, duke of, 383. 
JSIontcalm, marquis of, 499, 500. 
Mont-Dauphin, 427. 
Montebello, battle of, 653. 
Monte Cassino, 54, 69, 126. 
Montecuccoli, 436, 437. 
Montenotte, battle of, 567. 
Montereau, 223. 

Montespan, marchioness of, 459, 466. 
Montesquieu, president, 486, 518, 519, 530. 
Montesquiou, 554. 
Montfaucon, 474. 
Montferrat, 399. 

Montfort, Amaury and Simon de, 154. 
Montgomery, ct. of, 318. 
Montiel, 206. 
Montlh6ry, 222, 255. 
Mont-Louis, 427. 
Montluc, Blaise de, 316, 329, 341. 
Montraartre, 96, 214, 661. 
Montmorency, house of, 252, 320, 348, 

351; constable of, 310, 314, 316, 333, 342, 

344; counts of, 349, 356, 536; duke of, 

395. 
Montmorency, Mathieu de, 541. 



INDEX. 



69T 



Montpellier, 8, 154, 340; acquired, 181, 

193; given to Navarre, 204; University 

of, 167, 170. 
Montpensier, 364; duke of, 641, 642, 644; 

duchess of, 360, 362. 
Montreuil, 201. 
Mont-Saint-Jean, 627, 628. 
Moral, 266. 
Moravia, 62. 

Moreau, 566-571, 575, 581-584, 589, 618. 
Morgarten, 242. 
Morocco, 641. 
Mortemer, 109. 

Mortier, marshal, 590, 615, 638. 
Mortuarium, 138. 
Morvan, 2. 

Moscow, 613-615, 617. 
Moselle, 3, 6. 
Moslems, (58. 

Motteville, Madame de, 472. 
Moullns, 352 ; ordinance of, 343. 
Mourzoufle, 152. 
Miihlherg, 314. 
Miilhausen, hattle of, 436. 
Municipalities, 135-138. See Communes. 
Miinster, treaty of, 406. 
Murat, marshal, 590, 596-599, 605; king 

of Naples, 605, 616, 620; 
Muret, 154. • 

Nablous, 132. 

Nafels, 242. 

Najara, 205. 

Namur, 447, 448. 

Nancy, 265, 266. 

Nantes, 5, 91, 189, 495, 558, 562, 601 ; edict 
of, 375, 885, 390, 391; revoked, 442-444, 
463, 467, 487. 

Naples, Normans in, 110; kina; of, 272, 
283; expeditions to, 282, 284^286, 289- 
291, 319; kingdom of, 430, 458, 490, 502; 
during Revolution and Empire, 575, 584, 
589, 593, 596, 604, 610; since, 633. 

Napoleon I., Bonaparte, 501, 564, 566; 
Italian and Egyptian campaigns, 567- 
574; 18th Brumaire, 576, 577; consulate, 
579-589; empire, to 1807, 590-603; to 
1812,604-609; to 1814, 610-623; position 
in history, 622, 623; the Hundred Days, 
625-630; captivity and death, 631, 633; 
remains removed, 640. 

Napoleon II., 609, 629, 637. 

Napoleon III., 636; and M. Duruy, 
xiii-xvi; president, 646-649; emperor, 
649-659; death of, 663. . 

Napoleon (IV.), prince imperial, 662, 669. 

Napoleou, Prince, 669, 671, 675. 

Narbo Martins, 35. 

Narbonne, 19, 28, 35, 68, -72. 

National Defence, Government of, 659, 
660. 

National Guard, 541, 549, 552, 564. 

Navarino, battle of, 634. 

Navarre, 75, 78, 318; kingdom of, 91, 96, 
100, 101, 175, 187; king of, 272 (see 
Bourbon and Henry IV.) ; war in, 293, 
305. 

Navarro, Pedro, 301. 



Navy, under Francis I., 322; under Henry 
IV., 380; under Richelieu, 397; under 
Louis XIV., 424, 457 ; under Louis XV., 
494, 495, 499; under Louis XVI., 526, 
527; during the Revolution and Empire, 
563, 564. 

Necker, xxix, 524, 525, 531, 534, 538-541, 
544, 546. 

Necklace, Diamond, 531. 

Neerwinden, battle of, 447, 448; (another), 
557. 

Nelson, admiral, 572, 573, 585, 593, 594. 

Nemours, 272; dukes of, 255, 256, 260, 
267, 268, 276, 290, 367, 368, 640, 644; 
treaty of, 356. 

Nepveu, Pierre, 325. 

Nero, 29. 

Nervii, 21. 

Nesle, 220, 261. 

Netherlands, under Burgundy, 263 ; re- 
volt of, 342, 343-347, 355, 368, 376 ; the 
United, 383, 392, 398, 400; and Louis 
XIV., 430, 431-439, 441, 450, 451, 453; 
and Louis XV., 481, 482, 494; and Louis 
XVI., 527, 533; Austrian, 458; invasion 
of, 551, 556, 557, 561-563 (see Batavian 
Republic, Holland); kingdom of the, 
631, 636, 639. 

Neuchatel, 595. 

Neuss, 264, 441. 

Neustria, 48, 50, 64, 65, 69. 

Neustrians, 52, 67, 68, 89. 

Neutrality, Armed, 527, 585. 

Nevers, count of, 217; duke of, 367. 

Newfoundland, 322, 423, 458, 500, 528. 

Ney, Marshal, 590, 594, 599, 608, 613, 616, 
621, 625, 627, 628, 632. 

Nicaea, 129, 130. 

Nice, 310, 311, 446, 554; acquired by 
France, 568, 653. 

Nicholas I., pope, 117. 

Nicholas V., pope, 245. 

Nicholas, czar, 652. 

Nicole, 474. 

Nicopolis, battle of, 217. 

Niraes, 27,28, 68, 72, 168, 349. 

Nivernais, 2; duke of, 415. 

Noailles, duke of, 483, 492. 

Noailles, viscouut of, 536, 541. 

Nobility, under Louis XL, 252, 254-258, 
266-269; under Louis XIII. , 386-392; 
under Louis XIV., 461, 462, 465, 466; 
under Louis XV., 510-512; abolished, 
544 ; Napoleon's, 596. 

Noblesse de robe, 387, 411, 461, 511. 

Nomenoi', 91, 94. 

Nominalists, 120, 143. 

Nordlingen, 401, 406. 

Normandy, constituted, 101, 102; insur- 
rections in, 108, 136; dukes of, 108, 109, 
110, 128, 130, 139, 256-258; conquered, 
150,155; the marshal of, 198; recovered, 
245, 246; parliament of, 296; states of, 
355; campaign in, 366. 

Normans, in Italy and Sicily, 127; in 
England, 127, 128. 

North Company, 423. 

North GermanC'onfederation, 657, 691. 



698 



INDEX. 



Northmen, 76, 77, 87, 100 ; attack France, 
91-95, 97; besiege Paris, 95, 96. 

Notables, Assembly of, 532, 533. 

Notre Dame, 157. 

Noureddin, sultan, 145. 

Novara, 289, 293, 647. 

Noyon, 46, 105, 137; treaty of, 304. 

Nymphenburg, treaty of, 491. 

Nymwegen, 83, 88, 263; treaty of, 429, 
438-442. 

Oberwesel, 445. 

Obotriti, 78. 

Odilon Barrot, M., 639, 642. 

Odin, 92. 

Odoacer, 35. 

Ogmius, 11. 

Ohio, 496. 

Oldenburg, duke of, 612, 613. 

Ollivier, 328, 336. 

Ontario, fort, 499. 

Opportunists, 674. 

Orange, 27; house of, 610; prince of, 
280. See William of Orange, Maurice, 
William III. 

Ordeal, 56, 57. 

Orders in Council, 612. 

Ordinances, 182; of Louis XIV., 428, 429. 

Orleanists, 662, 664, 671. 

Orleans, 5, 7, 34, 252; king of, 43; North- 
men at, 92; privileges of, 138; Univer- 
sity of, 167, 170; sieges of, 227-231, 
342; bastard of, see Dunois; ordinance 
of, 240, 241; duchy of, 295; ordinance 
of (1561), 338, 339; in the religious 
wars, 340, 348, 356; in the Germau 
War, 6-59. 

Orleans, duke of (1356), 196; Louis, br. 
of Charles VI., 212, 216-218, 288, 300, 
364; Charles, 221, 242, 250, 288, 364; 
Louis, see Louis XII.; Gaston, 394- 
396,400,412,413; Philip, 433, 438, 462; 
Henrietta, duchess of, 433, 470, 473; 
Elizabeth Charlotte, duchess of, 441; 
Philip, duke of (regent), 447, 459, 462, 
466; regency of, 480-486;, Philippe 
(Egalit<5), duke of, 537, 5-39, 540, 558; 
Louis Philippe, duke of, see Louis 
Philippe, king; Ferdinand, duke of, 
639,641; duchess of, 644; present duke, 
675. 

Orvilliers, count d', 526. 

Osnabriick, treaty of, 406. 

Ostend, 454, 593. 

Ostend Company, 488. 

Ostrogoths, 40, 41, 44. 

Otto the Great, emperor, 102, 103, 117. 

Otto IV., emperor, 150, 151. 

Oudenarde, 436, 493 ; battle of, 455. 

Oudinot, marshal, 608, 616, 647. 

Ouessant, battle off, 526. 

Overyssel, 434. 

Oxenstjerna, chancellor, 400. 

Oxford, earl of, 456. 

Oxford, Provisions of, 161. 

Palais Royal, 381, 403, 409, 450, 662. 
Palatinate, 435, 436, 441. 446, 561. 



Palatine, elector, 399. 

Palermo, battle off, 437. 

Palikao, battle of, 654. 

Palissy, Bernard, 327. 

Pampeluna, 45, 75. 

Pannonia, 49, 75. 

Pantheon, 520, 529, 547, 602. 

Paoli, Gen., 658. 

Papacy, xviii, xx. See Pope. 

Papin, Denis, 475. 

Parc-aux-Cerfs, 521. 

Par6, Ambroise, 329, 476. 

Paris, 4, 5, 7, 23, 28, 30, 39, 52, 151; Clovis 
at, 41, 42; Merovingian kings of, 43, 
48, 50; Northmen besiege, 92, 95, 96; 
its privileges, 138, 163, 168, 209, 215, 
219; University of, 158, 170; insurrec- 
tion of Marcel, 198-200 ; of the maillo- 
tins, 212, 213, 214; of the cabochiens, 
219-222; besieged by Charles VI., 232; 
and Louis XI., 255, 257; in the religious 
wars, 343, 347, 348, 356, 357, 359-363, 
366-373 ; in the Fronde, 410, 412 ; indus- 
tries of, 422; under Louis XIV., 464, 
465; treaty of (1763), 560; during the 
lievolution, 540-543, 551-553; Empire, 
601, 602; treaty of, 631; insurrections 
ill, 635, 637, 638, 645, 646, 647; treaty 
of, 652; siege of, 659, 660; commune, 
661, 662. 

Paris, count of, 639, 644, 662, 664, 671, 
675. 

Parish, the, 135. 

Parisii, 23. 

Parker, admiral, 585. 

Parliament, 181, 209, 216, 225; (provincial), 
244, 252, 273, 312, 321, 396, 504, 507, 508; 
(of Paris), 248, 251, 252, 255, 256, 267, 
268; (sixteenth century), 303, 321, 323, 
330, 333, 361, 371, 375 ; (seventeenth cen- 
tury), 385, 387, 396; during the regency 
of Anne of Austria, 404, 408-413; under 
Louis XIV., 461; under Louis XV., 
481, 489, 502-504, 514; under Louis 
XVI., 522, 523, 525, 533, 534. 

Parma, 302, 305, 482, 488, 490, 495, 500, 
502, 587; duke of, 400, 489, 568, 610. 

Parma, Alexander Farnese, prince of, 
368, 369. 

Parmentier, 529. 

Parthenopean Kepublic, 574. 

Partition Treaties, 449. 

Pascal, 468, 470, 473, 474, 475, 50L 

Passau, 453; peace of, 315. 

Pastoureaux, 161. 

Patay, 231. 

Patrician, title of, 41, 72, 74. 

Paul, bishop, 29. 

Paul IV., pope, 316. 

Paul I., czar, 584, 585. 

Paulette, 379, 387, 408. 

Pa via, 72, 74; battle of, 306, 307. 

Pays d'election, 511. 

Pmjs d'Etat, 511. 

Peasants' revolt, see Jacquerie. 

Pecquigny, sire de, xxvi ; treaty of (see 
tr^ve marchande) , 272. 

PeciiUum, 138. 



INDEX. 



699 



Pedro II., k. of Aragon, 154. 

Pedro III., of Aragon, 175. 

Pedro the Cruel, k. of Castile, 205, 206. 

Peers (jpares), 114; House of, 624. 

Pei-ho forts, 654. 

Peninsular War, 605, 606, 608-610, 613, 617. 

Penthifevre, 252. 

Pepin, see Pippin. 

Perche, 267, 272. 

Perier, Casimir, 636, 637. 

PiJrigord, 2; count of, 205; county of, 98. 

P^rigueux, 43, 155. 

P^ronne, 256, 352; Charles the Simple at, 

102, 258; Louis XL at, 258-260, 262. 
Perosa, 350. 

" Perpetual Peace," 302. 
Perpignan, 268, 272. 
Perrault, 416, 476-478. 
Pescara, marquis of, 305, 306. 
Peter III., czar, 499. 
Peter the Hermit, 129. 
Peter de Brueys, 153. 
Peter Waldo, 153. 
Peter of Castelnau, 153, 154. 
P6tion, 550. 
Petit, Dr. Jean, 218. 
Petits-Maltres, the, 411. 
Petropaulovsk, 652. 
Pevensey, 128. 
Pfalzburg, 427. 
Philibert Emmanuel, d. of Savoy, 316, 

318. 
Philip I., king, 108, 139, 140, 186. 
Philip II., Augustus, 148-152, 155, 186. 
Philip III., the Bold, 175, 186. 
Philip IV., the Fair, xxiv, 175-182, 186, 

278 281 
Philip v.," the Long, 183-186. 
Philip VI., xxiv, 184, 186, 187-193, 278, 364. 
Philip the Bold, son of k. John, 196; 

duke of Burgundy, 202, 206, 208, 209, 

212, 214, 216, 217, 364. 
Philip the Good, d. of Burgundy, 223, 

225, 226, 232, 237, 238, 242, 247, 248, 251, 

253, 254, 364. 
Philip II., k. of Spain, 312, 316-318, 334, 

336, 339, 340, 342-344, 353, 355, 356, 360, 

364, 365, 367, 370, 371, 373, 376, 430, 433. 
Philip III., k. of Spain, 382. 
Philip IV., k. of Spain, 430, 431. 
Philip v., k. of Spain, 449, 450, 454, 458, 

481, 482, 487-489. 
Philip the Handsome, archduke, 270, 271, 

290, 364. 
Philippa of Hainault, q. of England, 191, 

192. 
Philippe de Rouvre, d. of Burgundy, 202. 
Philippeville, 427, 631. 
Philippines, 500. 

Philippsburg, 406, 407, 435, 437, 445, 490. 
Phoenicians, 10, 14. 
Piacenza, 302, 305, 482, 489, 490, 494, 495, 

500, 568. 
Picardy, 3, 272, 352, 389; invaded, 310, 

373, 400. 
Pichcsni, Gen., 561-563, 589. 
Piedmont, 548, 653; invaded, 310-312, 399, 

446, 452, 494. 



Pilatre de Rozier, 580. 

Pilgrimages, 126. 

Pilnitz, declaration of, 550. 

Pilon, Germain, 327. 

Pinel 529 

Pinerolo, 350, 399, 407, 419. 

Pippin of Heristal, 62, 64, 65, 66-68, 104. 

Pippin of Landen, 61, 62, 63, 66, 67, 104. 

Pippin the Short, mayor, 69; king, 70, 
72, 73, 78, 104. 

Pippin, son of Charlemagne, 86. 

Pippin, son of Louis the Pious, 87, 88, 
104. 

Pirna, 497. 

Pisa, council at, 292, 294. 

Pisan, Christine de, 210. 

Pistes, 94. 

Pithou, Pierre, 328. 

Pitt, William (Lord Chatham), 498. 

Pitt, William (the younger), 556, 574, 
596. 

PiuB v., pope, 343, 346. 

Pius VI., pope, 568, 569, 574. 

Pius VII., pope, 586, 591, 604, 605. 

Pizarro, 304. 

Place du Carrousel, 478; des Victoires, 
478; Vendome, 478. 

Plain, the, 555, 559. 

Plectrude, 67, 68. 

Plessis-les-Tours, 271, 362. 

Poggio, 297. 

Poissy, conference of, 339. 

Poitiers, 40, 43, 144, 340; Saracens at, 
68; county of, 94, 98; counts of, 106; 
battle of, 177, 195, 196; recovery of, 
208. 

Poitou, county of, 98, 150, 165, 175. 

Poland, 349, 350, 400, 501, 504, 563, 596, 
598, 612, 614, 636, 645. See Warsaw. 

Polish Succession, War of the, 4h9, 490. 

Police, under Louis XIV., 464. 

Poliguac, M. de, 635. * 

Politiques, the, 350, 351, 353, 356, 370, 
386. 

Poltrot de Mere, 342. 

Polycarp, St., 28. 

Poiiibal, marquis of, 521. 

Pompadour, marchioness' of, 495, 497, 
498, 500, 502, 505. 

Poraponne, marquis of, 429. 

Ponce, Paul, 326. 

Pondicherry, 424, 495, 499, 500, 528. 

Ponchartrain, chancellor, 442, 450. 

Pont du Gard, 27. 

Ponthieu, 201; count of, 139. 

Pont Neuf, 381. 

Pontoise, 95, 242, 256; states of, 3.39, 517. 

Poi^e, and Carolingians, 69, 76, 88; Pip- 
pin's donation to, 72, 74; and Capetians, 
107, 117, 142, 144; and St. Louis. 160, 
164; and Philip IV., 78, 179; and Louis 
XIV., 440-442; and Napoleon, 568, 586, 
604, 605, 610; and Napoleon III., 647. 

Porte St. Antoine, 199. 

Porte St. Denis, 199, 478. 

Porte St. Martin, 478. 

Port Mahon, 45S, 488, 496. 

Port-Royal, 380. 



^00 



INDEX. 



Port-Royal des Champs, 464, 474. 

Portugal, 355; iSTonnans in, 110, 128; re- 
volt of, 400-402, 430; relations with, 
424, 431, 450, 454, 527; do., under the 
Empire, 684, 604; subsequently, 637, 
675. 

Postel, 328. 

Posts, 273, 297. 

Pot, Philippe, sire de la Roche, xxvi, 277, 

Pothinus, 28, 29. 

Poussin, 468, 476. 

Pragmatic Sanction, of Bourges, 244, 245, 
252, 278, 302, 303; of Emperor Charles 
VI., 488, 489, 491. 

Prague, 492, 493, 497. 

Pralrial, 22d, 559, 560; 1st, 560; 30th, 576. 

Praslin, duke of, 500. 

Precaria, 60, 80. 

Prefect, praetorian, 27; departmental, 
580. 

Pregent de Bidoulx, 294. 

Prenzlau, 598. 

President, of province, 27. 

Pressburg, treat}^ of, 595. 

Prie, Madame de, 487. 

Primoguet, Herve, 294. 

Printing-office, Royal, 328, 476. 

Privileges, abolition of, 541. 

Probus, 30, 33. 

Protective system, 674. 

Protestants, in France, 309, 310, 334 (see 
Huguenots) ; in Germany, 310-312, 314, 
315, 319, 335, 383, 391, 399-402, 406. 

Provence, 44, 88, 89, 90, 168, 536; Charles 
Martel in, 68; kingdom of, 94, 95, 100, 
102; county of, 153, 159, 193; acquired, 
271, 272; parliament of, 296; invaded, 
306, 310, 454. 

Provera, 569. 

Provincia (Narbonensis), 19. 

Provins, 138. 

Provosts, 156. 

Prussia (see Frederick 11.), 527; waTs 
with, 551-563, 596-598, 600, 610; aggran- 
dizement of, 631, 655, 656; war with, 
657-661. 

Public Weal, League of the, 254-256, 267, 
280. 

Public works of Napoleon I., 601, 602; 
of Napoleon III., 650. 

Puebia, captured, 655. 

Puget, 416, 476, 477. 

Pugny, 138. 

Pyramids, battle of tbe, 573. 

Pyrenees, 1, 2, 4; treaty of the, 414; 
campaigns in, 561-563. 

Pyrrhus, 18. 

Quarantaine le roi, 136, 162. 
Quatre-Bras, battle of, 627. 
Quebec, 380, 397, 500. 
Quercy, 2, 94, 181. 
Quesnaj^ 561. 

Qnesuay, Francois, 519, 520. 
Quesnel, P6re, 464. 
Quiberon, 563. 
Quietism, 464. 



Quinault, 472, 477. 
Quinze-Vingts, 165. 

Rabelais, 330. 

Raciue, 381, 416, 425, 463, 469, 472, 473. 

Radegund, St., 46. 

Radicals, 674-676. 

Raginfred, 68. 

Ragnachar, 38, 41. 

Rambouillet, 312. 

Ramillies, battle of, 4.53. 

Ramla, 132. 

Ramus, 329. 

Rapallo, 285. 

Raphael, 324, 325. 

Rastadt, treaty of, 457, 458. 

Ratisbon, diet of, 399. 

Raiicoux, battle of, 494. 

Ravaiilac, Francois, 383, 384. 

Ravenna, 72, 293. 

Raymond IV., ct. of Toulouse, 128, 130. 

Raymond VI., ct. of Toulouse, 153, 154. 

Raymond VII., 154. 

Raymond Lulli, 171, 174. 

Raynal, abbe, 519. 

Re, Isle of, 393, 427. 

Realists, 120, 143. 

Reason, goddess of, 558, 559. 

Reaumur, 520. 

Reformation, 309, 310, 317, 333-335. 

Reforms, by National Assembly, 543-545. 

Regale, 442, 463. 

Regnier, Mathurin, 381, 472. 

Reign of Terror, 552, 557-560. 

Reliefs, 114. 

Religion, of the Grauls, 11, 12; in Mero- 
vingian times, 47; wars of, 332-376. 

Rely, Jean de, 278. 

Remi, 26. 

Remi, St. (Remigius), 39. 

Renaissance, precursors of, 83, 84, 124; 
arrival of, 297, 303; under Francis I. 
and Henry II., 324-331; later, 381. 

Rene, d. of Lorraine, 242. 

Rene, ct. of Anjou, 269, 271. 

Rennes, 189, 208, 281. 

Republic of 1848, 644-649; third, 659-677. 

Retz, cardinal de, 409-413, 472. 

Retz, Gillesde, 240. 

Retz, marshal de, xxiv. 

Reunion, Chambers of, 440. 

Reunion, Isle de, 494. 

Revolution, French, 543-565, 611; of 1830, 
635, 636; of 1848, 643, 644. 

Rewbel, 566. 

Reynard the Fox, 115, 172. 

Rbeims, 28, 200, 215, 252, 356, 620; arch- 
bishop, 101; council of , 142 ; coronation 
of Charles VH. at, 231, 232; of Henry 
in., 350. 

Rheinfeld, 401. 

Rhine, 1, 2, 7; its valley, 6; League of 
the, 414, 4.32, 434 ; Confederation of the, 
592, 595, 600, 604, 610. 

Rhodians, 10. 

Rhone, 1, 2; its vallej'; 5, 6. 

Richard I. Cceur de Lion, k. of England, 
149, 150. 



INDEX. 



701 



Richard H. of England, 213, 217. 

Richard HI. of England, 379. 

Richelieu, cardinal, xxv, 322, 387-403, 

433, 471. 
Richelieu, duke of, 496, 497, 516, 632. 
Richemont, Arthur de, 226, 237, 238, 240, 

245. 
Richer, 119. 
Rienzi, 213. 
Rigaud, 477. 
Rio Janeiro, 457. 
Ripuarians, 56, 66. 
Riviere, commandant, 672. 
Rivoli, battle of, 589. 
Roads, Napoleon's, 602. 
Robert, d. of France, 101, 102, 186. 
Robert, k. of France, 106-108, 136, 186. 
Robert, son of k. Robert, 108. 
Robert, ct. of Artois, 177. 
Robert, ct. of Artois, 188. 
Robert, d. of Burgundy, 186. 
Robert, ct. of Clermont, 186, 364. 
Robert Guiscard, xix, 127. 
Robert the Magnificent, duke, 108, 109, 

126. 
Robert, son of William the Conqueror, 

110, 130. 
Robert the Strong, 93, 94, 95, 100, 186. 
Robespierre, 546, 549, 552, 555, 557, 559, 

560. 
Rochambeau, count, 527. 
Roche, sire de la, xxvi, 277, 278. 
Rochefort, 424. 
Rochefort, H., 659. 

Rochelle, 155, 208, 246, 427; under Hugue- 
nots, 344-346, 349, 391-393. 
Rocroi, battle of, 405. 
Rodney, admiral, lord, 527. 
Rodolph, k. of Burgundy, 100; of France, 

102, 186. 
Roemer, 476. 

Roger, count of Sicily, 127. 
Roger-Ducos, 576, 577. 
Rohan, cardinal, 531; duke of, 388-392; 

duchess of, 393. 
Rohan-Chabot, chevalier de, 517. 
Roisfainiants, 59, 60, 67, 69. 
Roland, 75, 115. 
Roland de la Platifere, 551. 
Rollo, 95, 101, 102, 
Romagna, 292, 569. 
Romance language, 89. 
Roman de la Rose, 172. 
Roman Empire, influence of, 41, 57, 58, 

76, 167, 168. 
Romanus II., emperor, 108. 
Rome, 441; captured by Gauls, 15, 16; 

attacks the Cisalpine Gauls, 16, 17; 

sacked by Germans, 308; grand jJrix 

de, 477; occupied, 605, 647. 
Romorantin, 336. 
Romulus Augustulus, 35. 
Roncesvalles, 75. 
Ronsard, Pierre, 331. 
Roosebeke, 213. 
Roscellinus, 120. 
Rosny, see Sully. 
Rossbach, battle of, 497, 596. 



Roturier, 121. 

Rouen, 5, 150, 189, 256, 262, 297; a bishop 
of, 50; Northmen at, 91, 95; council of, 
136; English at, 222, 232, 236; death of 
Jeanne d'Aro at, 232-236; recovered, 
245; in religious wars, 340, 341, 356, 366, 
369; assembly of notables at, 374; in 
1870, 659. 

Rouergue, 94, 195. 

Rouille, 495. 

Rousseau, 519, 529, 530, 555. 

Roussillon, 153, 253, 268, 272, 284, 299, 
398; acquired, 400-402, 414, 430, 458, 
558. 

Rouvray, 227. 

Royalists, 571, 632-634, 664, 667, 668, 670, 
671, 673, 675, 676. 

Royalty, aggrandizement of, xx, xxi, 
xxiv-xxix ; Merovingian, 57-60, 70 (see 
Rois fainiants); Carolingiau, 78-80, 97, 
100; Capetian, 106; under Louis VI., 
139, 140; under Philip Augustus, 148, 
149, 155-158; in the thirteenth century, 
162-164, 166, 176; under Charles VIl. 
and Louis XI., 240, 250, 266-273; dur- 
ing Renaissance period, 281, 282, 294, 
295, 320, 374; and Richelieu, 392, 396, 
397; under Louis XIV., 417, 418, 429, 
460-467; under Louis XV., 506, 507. 

Royer-Collard, 634. 

Rueil, convention of, 411. 

Russia, grand duke of, 108, 455, 497-499, 
501, 528; wars with, 575, 589, 593-595, 
598-600, 612-617, 651-653. 

Ruteboeuf, 172. 

Ryswyk, treaty of, 448-450. 

Saarbriicken, 440. 

Saarlouis, 427, 448, 458, 631. 

Sabinus (Roman), 21; (Gaul), 29, 30. 

Sable, 280. 

Sacy, Le Maistre de, 474. 

Sadowa, 655, 656. 

Saigon, 654. 

St. Andre, marshal, 314, 340, 342. 

St. Aubin du Cormier, 280. 

St. Bartholomew, massacre of, 347, 348. 

St. Bernard, Great, 582, 583. 

St. Cloud, 45, 189, 362, 363, 479, 576, 577. 

St. Cyr, marshal, 606. 

St. Cyran, abbe de, 464. 

St. Denis, 62, 225, 232, 372, 438, 602; abbot 

of, 113, 277 ; battle of, 344. 
St. Dizier, 311. 
Sainte-Menehould, 387, 548. 
Saintes, 28, 40, 43, 91, 93, 345; battle of, 

160. 
St. Eustatiue, 527. 
St. Florent, 561. 
St. Germain, count of, 522. 
St. Germain, chateau, 325, 326, 381, 43& 

479; peace of, 346; edict of, 409. 
St. Germain I'Auxerrois, 347. 
St. Helena, 630, 640. 
St. Jean d'Angely, abbot of, 261. 
St. JeanPied-de-Port, 427. 
St. John, Knights of, 133, 585. 
St. Just, 555, 559, 561. 



702 



INDEX. 



St. Lo, 101. 

St. Louis, see Louis IX.; chamber of, 

409. 
St. Lucia, 423, 500, 528. 
St. Malo, 445. 

St. Martin, marquis of, 530. 
St. Maur, 256, 474. 
St. Petersburg, 613, 614. 
St. Pierre, island, 500, 528. 
St. Pierre, Bernardin de, 530, 602. 
St. Pierre, Eustaclie de, 191, 192. 
St. Po), cts. of, 219, 242, 252, 256, 257, 261, 

265, 268, 269, 272. 
St. Quentin, 26, 1.37,238,260,265; battle 

of, 316, 317, 322. 
St. Simon, duke of (elder), 394; (younger), 

443, 466, 467, 472, 479, 480, 482. 
St. Vincent, (island), 500. 
Baladin, 149. 

Salamanca, battle of, 617. 
Salerno, 127. 

Saliaus, 30, 32, 34, 35, 38; code of, 56. 
Salic law, 57, 183, 184, 194, 371. 
Salisbury, earl of, 226, 227. 
Salle des Menus, 537. 
Salmasius, 474. 
Saluzzo, 376; marquis of, 284. 
Salyes, 19. 

Salzbach, battle of, 4.36. 
Sancerre, county of, 159. 
San Domingo, 423, 495, 563, 588. 
San Germano, 285. 
Sau Juan d'Ulloa, 638. 
Sanson, Nicolas, 476. 
Santones, 26. 
Paone, 6, 8. 
Saracens, 68, 75, 87, 91, 101, 102, 107, 127, 

128. 
SaragOBsa, 75, 606, 60".. 
Sardinia, 75, 78, 458, 482; king of, 491, 

492, 495, 574, 610; war in behalf of, 653. 
Sarto, Andrea del, 325. 
Satalieh, 145. 

Satire Mhdppie, 371, 381. 
Saturninus, 29. 
Saumur, 348, 562. 
Saussure, Gen., 676. 
Savannah, 527. 
Savenay, battle of, 562. 
Savigliano, 350. 
Savona, 605. 
Savonarola, 284, 285. 
Savoy, 310, 312, 318, 383, 398, 554, 631; 

acquired by France, 568, 653; dukes of, 

272, 288, 316, 350, 365, 367, 376, 382, 399- 

401, 441, 445, 446, 448, 450, 452-454, 458, 

482. See Sardinia, king of. 
Saxe, marshal, 493-495, 516. 
Saxons, 45, 62, 69; attacked by Pippin, 

72; conquered by Charlemagne, 73, 74. 
Saxony, 455, 493, 498; elector of, 401, 491, 

492, 497; king of, 600, 610. 
Say, Leon, 666. 
Scabini, 81. 
, Scahger, 331, 474. 
Scarron, 466. 
Sceaux, chateau of, 479. 
Scheldt, 3. 



Scherer, Gen., 575. 

Schism, the, 211. 

Schmalkald, league of, 309. 

Scholasticism, 170, 171. 

Schomberg, marshal, 443. 

Schonbrunn, 609. 

Schools, of Charlemagne, 83, 84, 118; 

eighteenth century, 515, 529; estab- 

hshed by Convention, 565 ; by Napoleon, 

I., 601; by Napoleon III., 651. 
Schwartzeuberg, prince, 619-621. 
Schwyz, 265. 

Science, 520, 528, 602, 603. 
Scordisci, 17. 
Scotists, 171. 
Scotland, ally of France, 187, 188, 206, 226, 

272, 293, 309. 
Scotus Erigena, 119. 
Scrutin d'arrondissement, 665, 670; de 

liste, 665, 670, 671, 674. 
Sebastopol, 652. 
Secretaries of state, 418, 419. 
Sedan, 395, 396; battle of, 658, 659. 
Seez, 310. 

Seguier, Pierre, chancellor, 418, 428. 
Segur, count of, 591. 
Seignelay, marquis of, 440, 442. 
Seine, valley of, 4, 7. 
Seminara, 290. 
Sempach, 242. 
Senate, 579, 580, 587, 590, 591, 611, 621; 

in Third Republic, 665-670, 673, 674, 

676. 
Senef, battle of, 436. 
Senegal, 437, 458, 500, 528. 
Senegal Company, 423, 484. 
Senlis, 105, 180. 
Senones, 15, 16, 23. 
Sens, 223, 340; archbishop of, 105; battle 

of, 406, 409 ; council of, 143. 
September massacres, 552, 553. 
Septimania, 41, 44, 68, 87, 88, 91; Pippin 

conquers, 72; marquisate of, 94. 
Sequani, 14, 20. 
Serfdom, xxii-xxiv; in sixth century, 57; 

in eleventh, 121; twelfth, 135-139; thir 

teenth, 167; fourteenth, 183. 
Serfs, insurrection of, 108, 136. 
Serres, Olivier de, 379. 
Servan, 551. 

" Serviteur, Le loyal," 329. 
Seven Years' War, 496-501. 
Sevign6, Madame de, 416, 443, 468, 471, 

478. 
Sforza, Francesco, 253, 255; (another), 

310. 
Sforza, Galeazzo, 253, 272, 283. 
Sforza, Ludovico (il Moro), 283-286, 288, 

289. 
Sforza, Maximilian, 293, 301, 302. 
Sicambri, 32. 
Sicily, Normans in, 110, 127; French in, 

161, 175; king of, 218; kingdom of, 458, 

482, 490, 500, 527. 
Sidonius Apollinaris, 28. 
Sienna, 316, 319. 
Sieyfes, abb(§, 535, 538, 576, 577, 579, 581, 

587. 



INDEX. 



703 



Sigebert, k. at Cologne, 41. 

Sigebert I., k. of Austrasia, 48-50, 71. 

Sigebert II., 63, 71. 

Sigismund, k. of the Burgundians, 44. 

Sigismund, k. of Hungary, 217. 

Sigismund, archduke, 264. 

Silesia, 491, 493, 495, 496-501, 599, 617, 618. 

Simon, Jules, 659, 666, 667. 

Sixteen, The, 359, 361, 367, 369, 370. 

SixtUB v., pope, 367. 

" Skinners," 241, 242. 

Slavery, in sixth century, 57. 

Slave-trade, 641. 

Slavs, 87. 

Sluys, 188. 

Smith, Sir Sidney, 574, 585. 

Smolensk, 614, 615. 

Smorgoni, 616. 

Soissous, 26, 70, 232; battles at, 38, 39,42, 
68; kings of, 43, 48; commune of, 137; 
counts of, 139, 358, 395, 415; council of, 
143. 

Solferino, battle of, 653. 

Solothurn, 265. 

Solyman II., sultan, 307-309, 311. 

Somerset, duke of, 245. 

Somme, 3. 

Sonderbund, 642. 

Sontay, 672. 

Sorbonne, 165, 327, 333, 339, 359, 362, 368, 
373, 403, 489, 514. 

Sorel, Agnes, 240. 

Soubise, duke of, 392; prince of, 497. 

Soufflot, 520. 

Soult, marshal, 590, 606, 608, 613, 61^, 621, 
639, 640. 

Spain, Celts in, 15; Goths in, 49; Saracens 
in, 68 (see Philip II.), 385, 386, 392, 396; 
Richelieu and, 398-401; conclusion of 
■war with, 405, 406, 413, 414; Louis 
XIV. and, 430-433, 438, 441, 445, 448; 
Spanish Succession, War of, 449-458; 
relations with, under Louis XV., 481, 
482, 491-494, .500; under Louis XVI., 
526-528, 548; war with, 556, 561-563; 
Napoleon and, 584. 605, 606, 608-610, 
613, 617; Louis XVIII. and, 633; sub- 
sequent relations, 637, 641, 642, 654, 657. 

Spanish March, 75, 107. 

Speyer, 446, 453, 554. 

Spicheren, battle of, 658. 

Spurs, battle of the, 293. 

Stael, Mme. de, 602. 

Staff arda, battle of, 446. 

Stahrembcrg, count, 456. 

Stanislas Leszczynski, k. of Poland, 487, 
490, 501. 

States-General, xxiv; early, 179, 180, 182- 
185, 192; in John's reign, 194-196; un- 
der Charles V.-VII., 206, 210, 240, 241, 
244; under Louis XL, 258; under 
Charles VIII., 276-279; under Louis 
XII. and his successors, 291, 321, 322; 
during the religious wars, 336, 338, 351- 
353, 370-372, 386; under Louis XIIL, 
386-388; (Louis XIV.), 460, 467; (Louis 
XV.), 503, 504; of 1789, 533-538. See 
ABsembly, National. 



Steenkerk, 447. 

Stenay, 658. 

Stephen II., pope, 72. 

Stockach, battle of, 575. 

Stofflet, 561. 

Stollhofen, 452. 

Strabo, xvii, 10. 

Strassburg, 7, 30, 315, 427, 436, 638; ac 
quired, 440, 448, 458, 469; siege of 
(1870), 658, 659. 

Strassburg Oaths, 89. 

Stremonius, 29. 

Stromboli, battle off, 437. 

Strozzi, 316. 

Styrum, count of, 452. 

Suohet, marshal, 617, 621. 

Suessiones, 21, 26. 

Suevi, 20, 32, 33. 

Suez Canal, 654. 

Suffren, bailli de, 527. 

Suger, abbot, 139, 140, 145-147. 

Suffolk, earl of, 227, 231. 

Sully, duke of, 373-375, 377-380, 383, 385, 
386, 397. 

Sulpicius, 16. 

Sunderland, duke of, 451. 

Surat, 424. 

Susa, treaty of, 399. 

Suwarof, 575. 

Suzerain, 112-114. 

Swabia, 595. 

Sweden, 309, 400-402, 406, 414, 430, 432, 
433, 441, 501, 528; (joins Armed Neu- 
trality, 527, 585) ; 589, 593', 610, 613. 

Swedenborg, 530. 

Swiss, 289, 292-294, 301; in French ser- 
vice, 272, 276, 284, 305, 307, 322, 341, 343, 
359, 362, 409, 552, 635; alliance with, 
302, 400. 

Switzerland, converted, 69; French wars 
in, 242, 243; Burguudian wars against, 
264-266; during the Revolution and 
Empire, 548, 575, 576, 5S2, 587, 592, 610; 
since, 642, 643. 

Syagrius, 35, 36, 39, 40, 41. 

Sylvester II., pope, 119. 

Syracuse, battle off, 437. 

Syria, 573, 639, 640, 653, 654. 

Tabor, Mount, 573. 
Tacitus, 32, 38. 
Tahiti, 641. 

Taille, 122, 209, 279, 323, 420, 421, 512, 532. 
Taillebourg, 160. 
Talavera, battle of, 608. 
Talbot, lord, 227, 231, 246. 
Tallard, marshal, 453. , 

Talleyrand, prince, 590, 596, 621, 624. 
Tamatave, 672. 
Tancred, 130, 1.31. 
Tangier, 641. 

Tanneguy-Duchatel, 223, 226. 
Tanucci, .521. 
Tarbes, 93. 
Tassilo, 74, 75. 

Tav.annes, marshal, 345-347, 350. 
Taxation, Carolingian; 80; under Philip 
IV., 181, 182; Philip VI., 192, 193; un- 



704 



INDEX. 



der John, 195, 197, 201, 202; under 
Charles V.-VII., 209, 210, 212, 244; 
under Louis XI., 252; under Charles 
Vni., 279, 286; under the Valois-Or- 
leans, 323; under Henry IV., 378; under 
Louis XIV., 420, 421; under Louis XV., 
509, 511, 512; under Louis XVI., 532; 
during the. Revolution, .545. 

Tchitchagof, admiral, 615, 616. 

Telamon, cape, 16. 

Teligny, 347. 

Templars, 133, 177, 180, 181, 185. 

Temple, the, 552, 555. 

Tenoteri, 21. 

Tenda, 568. 

Tennis Court, Oath of the, 538, 539. 

Terray, abbe du, 502, 604, 505, 522. 

Terror, White, 632. 

Testry, battle of, 64, 65. 

Teutates, 11. 

Teutones, 19, 20. 

Texel, the, 563. 

Theodebald, 45, 71. 

Theodebert I., 44, 45, 71. 

Theodebert II., 51, 62, 71. 

Theoderic I., 43, 44, 45, 71. 

Theoderic II., 61, 52, 61, 71. 

Theoderic III., 64, 71. 

Theoderic IV., 69, 71. 

Theodoric, k. of Ostrogoths, 40, 44. 

Theodosius, 31. 

Thermidor, 9th, 559, 560. 

Thermopylas, 17. 

Therouanne, 36, 41, 270, 271, 315. 

Thiard, Pontus de, 331. 

Thierry, A., 37. 

Thiers, L. Adolphe, 637-640, 642, 643, 
659-664, 667. 

Thionville, 427, 661. 

Third Estate, xxiii, xxvii, 164, 166, 167, 
273, 276, 278, 321, 322, 338, 387; under 
Louis XIV. and XV., 462, 463, 479, 510- 
512; and States-General, 535-539. 

Thirty Years' War, 391, 397, 399-402, 
405^07. 

Thomas Aquinas, 166, 171, 174. 

Thomists, 171. 

Thore, 361. 

Thou, president de, 328, 329, 331; (his 
son), 396. 

Thuringia, 36, 43, 44, 597. 

Thuringians, 39, 62, 68. 

Tiberias, 132, 149. 

Tiberius, 29. 

Ticinus, 16. 

Tien-tsin, 654. 

Tillemont, Le Nain de, 474. 

Tilley, count, 400. 

Tilsit, treaty of, 600, 612. 

Tobago, 437, 496, 500, 528. 

Toledo, 168. 

ToU-Huys, 434. 

Tonquin, war in, 672, 673. 

Toplitz, 618. 

Torcy, marquis of, 450. 

Torgau, 499. 

Torres Vedras, 617. 

Torstenson, Lennart, 402. 



Toul, 101, 315, 407. 

Toulon, 424, 427, 454, 494; in the Revolu- 
tion, 568, 561, 666, 567, 572. 
Toulouse, 4, 6, 28, 34, 37, 40, 310, 422; 

besieged by Saracens, 68; count of, 

469; county of, 94, 98, 139, 159, 175; 

University of, 170 ; parliament of, 244, 

375, 395, 442, 514; in the religious wars, 

348; battle of, 621. 
Touraine, 150, 155, 352. 
Tour-la-Ville, 422. 

Tournai, 34, 36, 38, 50, 294, 302, 440, 493. 
Tournaments, 116. 
Tours, 26, 260, 274, 291, 422; battle of, 

68 ; in religious wars, 340, 362. 
Tourville, count of, 445, 448. 
Tourzel, duchess of, 648. 
Toussaint Louverture, 588. 
Trafalgar, battle of, 594. 
Traktir, battle of, 652. 
Trasimenus, 16. 
Trebia, 16. 
Trent, 452; Council of, 334, 342, 373, 

387. 
Trtve marchande, 265. See Pecquigny, 

treaty of. 
Treveri, 22, 26. 
Treves, see Trier. 
Trianon, 479, 516, 531. 
Tribunal, Revolutionary, 557-569. 
Tribunate, 579, 580, 587, 590, 591. 
Tricasses, 26. 
Tricolor, 641. 
Trier, 26, 28, 436. 
Trinidad, 585. 
Triple Alliance, 432, 433. 
Tripoli (Palestine), 132; (Africa), 440. 
Trivulzio, marshal, 288, 289, 293, 301. 
Trochu, Gen., 669. 
Trogus Pompeius, 28. 
Trois-fiveches, 315, 318, 407, 440, 511. 
Trophimus, 29. 
Troubadours, 115. 
Trouvferes, 115, 172. 
Troyes, 26, 101, 231, 348; count of, 105, 

137, 138; treaty of, 223, 226, 237. 
Truce of God, 123, 136. 
Tuchins, 213. 
Tudesque language, 89. 
Tugendbund, the, 609. 
Tuileries, 326, 381, 478, 542; attacked, 

551, 552, 564; burned, 662. 
Tunis, 161, 308, 431, 440; occupied, 670. 
Turenne, viscount of, 368; (the great), 

405, 406, 410, 412-414, 416, 432, 434-437, 

465, 473. 
Turgot, xxix, 388, 522-525, 529. 
Turin, 452, 454. 
Turkey, relations with, 307-309, 311, 380, 

383, 431, 490, 574, 585, 600, 613, 634, 639, 

640, 652. 
Turkheim, battle of, 436. 
Turks, 482; capture Jerusalem, 129; at 

Nicopolis, 217. 
Turones, 26. 

Tuscany, 482, 488, 490, 584, 610. 
Tuttlingen, battle of, 405. 
Tyler, Wat, 213. 



INDEX. 



705 



Tyre, 132. 
Tyrol, 595, 607. 

Uhland, 617. 

Ulm, 582, 583, 593, 594. 

Unelli, 21. 

Unigenitus, bull, 464, 489. 

Union, Evangelical, 383. 

United States, relations with, 52fl, 528, 

613, 614. 
UniverBities, 158, 170, 211, 225, 237, 252, 

255 327. 
University of France, 586, 601, 624, 633. 
Unterwalden, 265. 
Urban II., pope, 129, 132. 
Urban VI., pope, 211. 
Uri, 265. 
Usipetes, 21. 
Us86, chi,teau, 326. 
Utrecht, 434; treaty of, 456-458, 482. 
Uxellodunum, 24. 

Valaia, 44. 

Val des Dunes, 109. 

Valence, university of, 274. 

Valencia, 606. 

Valenciennes, 437, 438, 558. 

Valentinian I., 27, 30. 

Valentinian 11., 31. 

Valentinois, 314. 

Valerius Cato, 28. 

Valette, cardinal de la, 401. 

Vallifere, duchesc de la, 466. 

Valmy, battle of, 553, 554. 

Valois, count of, 139 ; county of, 149, 175, 

295; house of, 184-287. 
Valois-Orleans, house of, 287. 
Valtellina, the, C02, 398, 400. 
Van Beuningen, schepen, 433. 
Vandals, S3, 34. 
Vanloo, Carle, 520. 
Vannes, 189. 
Van Robais, 442. 
Van Tromp, admiral, 434. 
Varennes, 548. 
Vasconec, 62, 73. 
Vassals, 82, 98, 112-114, 139. 
Vassy, massacre of, 340. 
Vatable, 297. 
Vauban, 424, 426-428, 434, 435, 438, 440, 

443, 447, 465, 467, 513, 515, 516. 
Vaucouleurs, 229. 
Vaudois, 312. 

Vaudrenil, marquis de, 500. 
Vauvenargues, 619. 
Velay, 2. 
Venaissin, 175. 

Vendee, war in, 557, 558, 661, 562, 571, 626. 
Vend6miaire, 13th, 564. 
Vendome, 364; bastard of, 232; count of, 

241; dukes of, 386, 405, 447, 448, 452, 

454-456, 466. 
Veneti, of Italy, 16; of Gaul, 21. 
Venetia, 595, 653. 
Vengeur, the, 564. 
Venice, 78, 152, 153, 168, 283, 286, 288, 

366, 570, 610; war against, 291, 292, 319; 

France aids, 301, 302, 398, 431. 



Vera Cruz, 638. 

Vercingetorix, 22-24. 

Verden, 74; bishopric of, 407. 

Verdun, 101, 315, 407, 552, 553; bishop of, 

260; count of, 126; treaty of, 89. 
Vergennes, count of, 522, 526. 
Vergniaud, 550, 557. 
Vermandois, counts of, 102, 105, 106, 130, 

139; county of, 149, 155. 
Vernet, J., 520. 
Verneuil, 225. 
Vernon, 245. 
Veromandui, 26. 
Verona, 74, 302, 568, 569; Congress of, 

633. 
Verrazano, 322. 
Versailles, 459, 465, 466, 476-479, 520, 531, 

534; treaty of (1656), 496; States-Gen- 
eral at, 537, 539, 541; attacked, 542; 

National Assembly at, 661-669. 
Vervins, treaty of, 376. 
Vespasian, 29. 
Vespers, Sicilian, 175. 
Vexin, 108, 110. 
Vicar, 27. 

Victor, marshal, 616. 
Victor, prince, 669, 675. 
Victor Amadeus, d. of Savoy, 399-401, 

446, 448, 450, 452-454. 
Victor Emmanuel, k. of Italy, 653. 
Vieilleville, marshal, 344. 
Vienna, treaty of, 490; occupied, 594, 

607; treaty of, 608; Congress of, 630, 

631. 
Vienne, 27, 28, 180, 310. 
Viete, 329. 
Vigo, 482. 

Villafranca, peace of, 653. 
Villani, Matteo, 201. 
Villaret-Joyeuse, admiral, 564. 
Villars, marshal, 451-455, 457, 490. 
Villars-Brancas, 369, 373. 
Villaviciosa, battle of, 456. 
Villehardouin, xxi, 172, 173. 
Villeins, 121. 
Villfele, M. de, 633, 634. 
Villeneuve, 137. 
Villeneuve, admiral, 593, 594. 
Villeneuve, count of, 490. 
Villeroi, duke of, 448, 452, 453. 
Villers-Cotterets, 321, 326. 
Villes de bourgeoisie, xxiii, 137, 138. 
Villette, marquis de, 527. 
Villon, Franyois, 274. 
Vimeiro, battle of, 606. 
Vimory, 358. 
Vincennes, 165, 589. 
Vincent of Beauvais, 171. 
Vinci, Leonardo da, 277, 325. 
Vindex, 29. 

VionviUe, battle of, 658. 
Vire, 245. 

Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, 201. 
Visconti, Valentina, 288. 
Viscounts, 112, 113. 
Visigoths, kingdom of, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 

72; subdued by Clovis, 40, 43; attacked 

by hi9 sons, 44; code of, 56. 



706 



INDEX. 



Vitiges, 44. 

VI try, 144; sieur de, 390. 

Vitry-le-Pran9oiB, 620. 

Vittoria, battle of, 617. 

Voiture, 469. 

Volcss, 19. 

Volta, 529. 

Voltaire, 468-473, 486, 498, 508, 517-519. 

529, 530. 
Vosges, 2, 3, 6; Turenne's campaign in 

the, 436. 
Vouill6, 40. 

Wace, Robert, 172. 

Waddington, M., 668, 669. 

Wagratn, battle of, 607, 608. 

Walfer, duke, 72, 7.ii. 

Walcheren, 92, 608. 

Waldeck, prince of, 446. 

Waldo, Peter, 153. 

Walhalla, 92. 

"Wallenstein, 399. 

"Wallia, 33. 

Wallis, 529. 

Walpole, Sir Robert, 489, 492. 

Walter the Penniless, 129. 

Wardship, 114. 

Warsaw, 598; grand duchy of, 600, 610, 
612. 

Wartensleben, 569. 

Warwick, earl of, 260. 

Washington, George, 496, 527. 

Waterloo, 627-629. 

Watignies, battle of, 561. 

Watteau, 477, 520. 

Weissenburg, battle of, 658. 

Wellesley, see Wellington. 

Wellington, 606, 608, 609, 613, 617, 619-621, 
626-630. 

Wends, 62. 

Werder, G-en., 660. 

Wergeld, 56. 

Werth, Johann von, 401. 

Wesel, 434, 595. 

West India Company, 423, 484. 

Westphalia, treaties of, 406, 414; king- 
dom of, 596, 600, 604, 610. 

White Hoods, 213. 

White Ship, the, 141. 



William the Conqueror, xix, 109 110 
127, 128. ' 

William II., Rufus, 110. 

William Clito, 141. 

William HI. (Prince of Orange), 434-438 
441; (k. of England), 444-450. ' 

William I., k. of Prussia, 657, 660; Ger- 
man emperor, 661. 

William of Champeaux, 143. 

William of Jumitjges, 119. 

William of Nogaret, 179. 

William of Orange, 355, 357. 

William of Tyre, archbishop, 123. 

William Henry, fort, 499. 

Willibrod, 69. 

Wilna, 614, 616. 

Wilson, M. Daniel, 676. 

Wi.'tzi, 74, 78. 

Winchester, see Beaufort. 

Winifred, 69. 

Witikind, 74. 

Witt, John and Cornelius de, 434, 435. 

Wittenberg, 618. 

Wittgenstein, prince, 615, 616. 

Wittstock, 401. 

Wolfe, Gen., 500. 

WolfenbUttel, 402. 

Wolsey, cardinal, 305. 

Worms, 406, 445, 554; concordat of, 142. 

Worth, battle of, 658. 

Wurmser, marshal, 568, 569. 

Wlirttemberg, duke of (king), 595, 610, 
618. 

Yorktown, 527. 

ypres, 213. 

Yvetot, battle of, 369. 

Zabern, 437. 
Zacharias, pope, 70. 
Zama, 16. 
Zara, 152. 
Zierickzee, 178. 
Znaim, armistice of, 608. 
Zorndorf, battle of, 498. 
Ziirich, 243, 575. 
Zusmarshausen, 406. 
Zweibriicken, 440. 



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